Glass Dagger
by gpshaw
Summary: The Animorphs join forces with another group to at long last end the Yeerk invasion. One of my earlier works so it's got some problems but I think that the story itself is strong, so try and enjoy it. M: Strong Language Sexual content Violence
1. Cover Sheet to delivered documents

USA FBI

CONFIDENTAL INFORMATION! !WARNING! you must have signed form IB-87 and have approval from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to view or you risk treason charges.

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WARNING: DO NOT except from courier if seal is broken or tapered with. In the event that seal is broken immediately inform your superior.

Contents:

Tapes of interviews with the members of the resistance group Animorphs and Glass Dagger regarding the events spanning February 3rd 2007- November 22nd 2007 Transcripts of the tapes have also been included for the hearing impaired.

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If either of these items is missing return package to courier and inform your superior.

Some of the transcript is written in third person narrative from what witness/suspects later told investigators off the record.

After receiving documents and checking to see that they are all undamaged and in order call your superior and inform him of your receipt of these documents, obtain permission from him before proceeding.

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Typo Notice

All dates should read 2007 if there is an inconsistency then do not report it to your superior, it has already been properly documented.


	2. 3rd person transcirpt of interogation of...

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FBI HQ Quantico Virginia

December 8th 2008

The two FBI agents escorted the man into the integration room. Both of them were rather annoyed at having to transport a witness to a crime that had been resolved ten months ago, however, it was a necessary step, each member of the groups had been interrogated and enough information about the events of the past few months had been pieced together. This last one was a mere formality.

The man was slightly tall with dirty red hair and brown eyes, he spoke with a slight southern accent that he didn't even notice. There was a large scar on his left cheek.

They sat him down in the chair and turned on the recorder. The interrogator started off simple.

"State your full name for the record along with any known aliases"

"Erik, Cortez, Bishop. AKA Copper head, burning cougar, and Dr. Morph"

"Occupation at times of incidents?"  
"Medical Student at Davidson University in Charlotte NC."

"What was your role in the resistance?"

"I was the leader of a resistance group known as Glass Dagger our focus was to steal information on the invasion, hinder invader's efforts, and kill key members of the invaders army."

"How did you accomplish this without alerting the invaders?"

"Stealth mainly, we would go in and out quickly leaving little evidence of our presence. Most of our work was blamed on the Animorphs."

"The Animorphs are in possession of a gift to change forms are you in the possession of the gift as well?"

"Yes, our organization came across the power sometime after we began our efforts. We obtained it by replicating the technology used by the alien race called Andilites. Which we acquired by intercepting transmissions from the aliens 'secure' radios.'

"Now explain the purpose of Applegate project." The questions would progressively harder from here on out.

"The Applegate project was an effort by members of the resistance force 'Animorph' to warn the public about the infiltration of earth by a patristic race of aliens known as Yerks. The project was carried out in the form of a series of books published through the Scholastic publishing company. Each member of the Animorph group participated in this project.

"The project was valid until late 2000 when the project was discovered and turned to propaganda by the invaders."

"What was the last valid publication of the Applegate project"

"Not sure of the title although I believe it was called _The Revelation _it told of Marco Rodriguez's retreat into a valley of Hork-Baijar." The interrogator, being a former controller didn't need to ask about the alien word. "Afterwards the books were changed in order to create the illusion that the resitance's backs were against the wall. The final book ended in a 'cliff hanger' as I am sure that you're other interrogations have revealed the book was total fiction."

"Sine the Applegate project was false," The interrogator spoke again. "What were the real events leading to the isolation of the Animorph organization, the merger between them and Glass Dagger, and the final invasion of the enemy base."

"I can't say much about what led to the isolation of the Animorph's since I was not aware of their existence at that time, anything I would tell you would be hearsay."

"We don't care tells us what you heard."

"The group retreated to the colony of Hork-Baijar after the infiltration of the Applegate project to avoid being discovered. It was about this time that my group met with theirs."

"We have learned a lot about your group from Mrs. Bishop, your wife, so I want you start at how you first came in contact with the Animorph resistance group."

"In order to tell you that I'll need to start off with one of our last missions alone…" Erik made himself comfortable, this could be a very long story. He would have a hard time telling it. The events that occurred had taken 4 of his best friends (his group had taken the heaviest casualties) among the dead was his brother-in-law, and his own sister. While he still felt stabs of guilt he though he was over the pain enough that he could tell his tale.

"Hope you've got a lot of them tapes." He said.


	3. TapeTranscript 1

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Davidson University

Ten Months Earlier

February 3rd 2007 3:22 pm

I never quite figured out how I did it but I managed to pass my advanced biology midterm. Since studying and sleep had disappeared from my priority list quite awhile ago. I was in a pretty good mood that day and was planning to take Karen out to celebrate. Of course the second I felt good, bad luck had to come from somewhere. Danny stopped me on my way back to my dorm.

"Erik," He said, squinting at the sun through his "Goth" makeup. "we need to have a talk." We walked to a more secluded corner of the courtyard I had been walking through. Anytime Danny approached me on campus I knew there was a big mission coming up. Although I was in charge of actually implementing missions Danny was my informant.

"What's up?"  
"The Yerks are taking up a new hotel, upper east side very high quality, charge you bout 50 bucks for mints, damn socialists…"

"Umm, Danny, the Yerks." If you didn't keep Danny on the subject he'd go off on a tangent, he had a great future in talk radio.

"Yeah, well, the way it looks now they're sneaking into the rooms while the guest are in a champagne induced sleep and infest them."

"That's pretty brave isn't it I mean what if someone wakes up?"

"They lace the champagne with depressants and narcotics, you'd have better luck trying to stay awake through professor Erwin's basic physics course."

"Okay, so when is it scheduled to open?"

"Tomorrow so you need to take care of things tonight."

"_Tonight_?! Dammit Danny couldn't you have told me that sooner?"

"I wanted to but it's getting harder to dig this stuff up. Yerks are starting to clamp down on this info. Trust me you want to nip this in the bud. It could make a lot of new controllers." I sighed heavily.

"Fine I'll get the guys together, what do you think will be able to shut this place down."

"A few well placed health violations since the inspector comes tomorrow."

"We'll take care of it." I got up to walk away.

"Don't kill anyone, you guys don't need to risk it, there may be security cameras."

"Okay we'll only carry tranquilizer darts."

"Tell me must every mission you guys carry out involve guns."

"Yeah since I want to leave each mission alive."


	4. Tape Transcript 2

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3:50 pm

Karen was waiting for me when I got to my dormitory. She greeted me with a peck on the lips.

"Hey baby heard about your grade." She smiled her perfect smile which set my skin on fire. She was a few inches shorter than me with long black hair. She was wearing the green coat that I had bought her for her birthday last week. "Where would you like to go to celebrate?"

"Somewhere you can wear a leotard, and carry a tranquilizer gun."

"_What?! _Why tonight of all nights, I mean between this and school, we don't have anytime together anymore." As always when she got angry her accent came back in a way that would put Clarice Starling to shame. I put my arms around her. She had really been looking forward to spending more time with me, since we had planned today as a day together whether I passed my test, or if the professor returned my paper with the words _Your Wrecking My Class Average Get it Together or I'll eat your Children_ on it.

"I know baby I know, but you know that we need to do this."

"Uh huh."

"Come on lets go I called the guys from the cell phone they'll be here soon."

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4:22 pm

I had been fortunate enough to get a good spacious dorm room so there was enough space for all eight of us to fit nicely. The first of our team to arrive was Jerry Moore, Moore was a fat kid with greasy black hair and gray eyes. Jerry was a skilled computer hacker, he could get into any computer system on earth in ten minutes.

"Nice job Bishop you set a new record, ten minutes notice, now what did you call us here for."

"Keep your shirt on." I said, "wait for the others."

Amy Love was the next to arrive. Amy was short and thin. Lately Amy had been looking worse for wear, the long days and sleepless nights finally getting to her. Her green eyes were very dull from the lack of sleep. She sat down without a word. Since I insisted on ten minute lapses before each group of two members left it was a while before Becky Thornton arrived. Becky was an average looking girl she had red hair and freckles, with blue eyes.

Becky was a communications expert she was good at getting radios to work and even better at translating garbled transmissions. We had her to thank for our morphing ability. Somehow Becky was always full of energy. She gave me a huge smile as she walked in and actually jumped over the bar that separated my kitchen from the living area.

"Whatever you're on I'll take 2 of em." I said glumly.

"Oh cheer up, you just need to love what you do to have my energy." She said in her perky voice that always managed to cheer up everyone around her. Almost on her heels was Fred, Fred was the only black man in our group (but please don't tell the ACLU) he was a strong man and a true success story if ever there was one.

Fred was born in the inner city, his father was killed by a gang member that wanted him to move up in the line at the DMV. His mother took care of him the best he could and was an inspiration to him. He studied hard and graduated top in his class at high school. Now he was at Davidson on a full academic scholarship and pursuing a degree in education.

Fred's origins made him useful to us, he was good at getting things to us that needed to be gotten.

"So, here we go again huh, Erik?" He said. Next to arrive was my sister Anna and her husband James. Anna was about my height with brown hair, while James only came up to her shoulder and had blonde hair. Most people didn't think they were a couple.

"OK now that everyone's here," I said. "Lets get moving".


	5. Tape Transcipt 3

After Becky did a thorough bug check I told them about the hotel.

"I assume you'll need me to get you hotel ID's?"

"Can you get them?" I asked I was afraid we'd have to blast our ways in. Fred smiled and took out a manila envelope.

"Already got em."

"Fred I could kiss you." I said.

"Don't please." I opened the folder, and encountered our first problem of the night. There were only three ID cards, meaning…

"Oh hell, do you mean to tell me that I came all the way up here when I could be at a bar watching wrestling just to say I can't go with you?" Jerry was mad, understandably so, since he loved going on missions.

"Look Jerry, we don't need a hacker, OK I'm going because I founded this group and wouldn't be able to live with the guilt if someone gets hurt. Becky's going because we need to tap into the security guard's channel, and Anna's coming because she'll kick my ass if I don't let her.

"The rest of you need to stay here cover for me if a telemarketer calls."

"Har fucking Har." Jerry said giving me the finger and the "up yours" signal in the same move.

"Seriously I want you guys to stay here if I get in trouble I want you to be here. I don't want to end up with an answering machine if I'm cornered by a bunch of Taxons." (Taxons are giant thick centipedes that eat there own and are mostly under voluntary infestation.)

"Fine, we'll stay." Jerry said.

"OK then, look I'm sorry about how fast the meeting moved but we need to get going, I want to get there before nightfall since we're on the night shift." I said looking at my card. I started out Karen got up from the chair and followed me. She gave me long kiss.

"Come back baby." She said.

"I will." I promised. "Oh, and tell Jerry if he wants to do something he hack into the hospitals mainframe can give a few of the hotel staff some STDs." Karen told me she would. I left the dormitory


	6. Tape Transcript 4

The weather had taken a turn for the worst. It had already started raining by the time we reached the hotel. We each decided to enter at different times. Becky went first so she could tap into the security channel so we'd know if anyone was on to us. I put in my earpiece, a small round disc that was undetectable, almost, and put a small microphone on my bottom lip, again almost invisible. Me and Anna sat and waited.

Anna had brought what we'd need. A few cockroaches, a jar of flies, and a few rats. Each was hidden in a fanny pack that we wore under our shirts to disguise it

We waited for about a half an hour when our earpieces came to life.

"This is Becky channel one is hot channel two is not." That meant that channel one on our earpieces had the security channel and channel two was our direct channel. The only way to tell the difference was that a channel 2 message was proceeded by a loud "beep".

Anna went in next. Becky's job was done she would be watching the security feed from the van we were in and warn us of any impending danger. Anna's job would be to mess up the kitchen, and mine would be to mess up individual rooms. After ten minutes I heard in my ear.

"Beep Okay Erik, you go." It sounded like Anna. I passed Becky on my way out she gave a thumbs up. I was soaked by the time I got to the hotel door. On he out side the hotel was gray it rose to about 28 stories and had a penthouse on top.

"Nasty weather today eh man?" The security guard said in his German as he took my card. The hotel was very luxurious there was a large fountain in the center of the lobby with swans swimming in it. The were waiting areas that had better furniture than my parents house. _Boy I wonder what the _rooms _are like. _ I thought to myself.

I followed the signs to the first set of rooms. I decided that I would release rodents in two rooms on every floor, and cockroaches in every room on every floor I entered. I swiped my ID card into the security lock of the first room. It opened .

The room was about a third bigger than an average hotel room. The two double beds looked comfortable and the bathrooms were well stocked. The room was immaculate. _Heh, heh not for long _ I thought as I released a rat and two cockroaches. Went out and went towards the next room when my ear piece went off, no beep so it must be a guard.

"Hello this is papa goose to all goslings…"  
"Shit Earl, no one is spying on us, just talk in normal English."

"OK then we've got a suspicious character on the premises." My heart skipped a beat I got ready to fight.


	7. Tape Transcript 5

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Auhors Note

Now's as good a time as any to add the legal crap

I do not own Animorphs or any property related to it. This is the work of KA Applegate I do take credit for Glass Dagger and all it's members (as well as the word glass and the internet). One more thing, if you pay attention to what the gaurds say it's kind of funny, but you have to read it just right.

"Person is a white female, blonde about 5'8, kinda good looking according to witnesses, looks to be in her late teens to early twenties…" Earl was saying.

"She 18 yet…" another voice

"Fuck off Pervo, this is serious." Earl again

"Sorry bad joke."

"Anyway she has no pass and ran from one of our guys when he asked to see it, keep an eye out for her."

"She armed?" A new voice this one with a military tone.

"Steve, for the love of God, this is not fucking Nam, no one in this building has a gun but us!"

"She's not armed to my knowledge, or she would have shot someone by now…" I tuned out the conversation. About a half an hour later I had come to the last room I panned to contaminate. As I entered it I thought I heard foot steps. I reached for the tranquilizer gun that I had tucked in a shoulder holster. I listened carefully no other sounds I started to release the rats, when I heard a sneeze come from the bathroom.

I dropped the case containing the bugs and rodents. It shattered and they scattered. I ran into the bathroom with my gun drawn, looked around saw no one. The I saw a shadow behind the shower curtain. Whoever was in here wasn't a good hider. I aimed my gun at the outline.

"Okay come out with your hands on your head." The curtain moved and out stepped the girl that the security gaurds had been looking for. She had her hands up but didn't look scared. Then I realized she saw that my gun was only a tranuilzer. "Hey blondey if this dart hits your neck you'll bleed out." She didn't react.

"Who are you what are you doing here?"

"You don't look like a security guard to me." She said.

"I'm not, now answer my question."

"Oh I'm just checking out the hotel thinking of coming here for my honeymoon."

"Bullshit, you can do that online now."

"I don't have internet access."

"So instead of dropping 35 a month for internet you thought you'd pay for a plane ticket to…" She took a swing at me… smart girl, I ducked just in time. She fell forward and noticed the rat that had scampered into the room.

"Did you put that here?" She asked, regaining her balance

"Yes I did"

"So your trying to sabotage a Yerk plan too."

"What how do you know about the Yerks?"

"how do you know about them?"

"Applegate project."

"I wrote some of those books, my name is Rachel pleased to meet you." She offered her hand. It all sank in. The Animorphs were here, I hadn't heard from them since the Applegate project went into left field.

"How many more of you are here?"

"Just me."

"Look I've done what I came to do so I'm leaving, they're looking for you so I suggest you come with me." My ear peiece crackled to life.

"We've got her, security cam picked her up ten miuntes ago she's ran into room 402. She's got one of our own guys there, but he hasn't called in I think she got him, or maybe he's another one of them too": Earl.

"Another one of them? What do you mean.?": the Veitiam guy.

"No time to explain, just get up there and have your guns ready. And be careful there's no camera's in the rooms, we don't know what you'll be facing.": Guy who cursed at Nam guy. I heard footsteps coming towards the door. I tapped my lip and said.

"Sis, our covers blown Abort, Abort!" I looked at Rachel. "Hope these guys like cats." I closed my eyes and began to morph.


	8. Tape Transcipt 6

Our groups ability to morph came from intercepted transmissions from Andilate transmissions. We were able to make a crude form of the power cube that gave the morphing power to whoever touched it, but it was alas crude and there was big problem with our morphs: they hurt. A lot!

As I began to change the first thing that happened was my legs turned around in my body, I gritted my teeth to avoid screaming. I fell forward breaking a- still human- rib My eyes changed to the more adapt eyes of a cougar. Fur began to sprout on my body. My two front teeth disappeared into my mouth, more pain, in their place grew two large fangs.

My ears caved in and shrunk they migrated from the side of my head to the top, I felt every inch they moved (for obvious reasons our group only morphs animals of the same sex we are) , my nose caved in and formed the nose of the cougar. My broken rib fixed itself as a cougar's rib. My already thing fingers became claws, which my hand expanded into a paw and covered.

My tail shot out from my butt, completing the change. Rachel had already finished her morph into a grizzly bear. My heightened cougar senses smelt the people coming, they all were sweating, I also heard them, they were close, closer, at the door.

Lets get ready to ruuummmmmble I yelled in thought-speak to Rachel. Her bear morph was turned away from me, so she didn't notice that I had morphed.

How did you, oh never mind I'll ask later she said as she door opened. I took the first guy, he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. He was entering hostile territory and he still had his gun holstered.

I pounced landing square on his chest. 258 pounds of big cat, crushed the man's ribcage. I decided to make sure he was dead so I bit his neck, with taste of blood the cougar mind tried to take over but I fought it. There were three other men out there one had taken a shot at me while I pounced he was now on the ground, cleaved in two my a very pissed off grizzly bear.

The other man fired a shot at Rachel, it hit her but her fur protected her, the bullet looked to be very low caliber. _Yerks, don't they ever learn?_ I pounced, his gun was a semi auto but he didn't have time to pull the trigger again.

I killed him the same way I killed the others. A nearby elevator opened and two more men ran out. They had their guns drawn and cocked. One dropped into a shooting stance and fired at me, this bullet got me in the right shoulder blade, _pain, _the bullet stopped before it hit a crucial organ thank God.

That, just made me angry. I gave the trademark "roooow" pounced and killed him, literally dodging a bullet while I did it, and jumped out of the elevator.

Think anymore are coming? Rachel asked. A gunshot answered her question. This one hit me in the front leg shattering it. I was crippled, but I rushed at the guy and was able to get a bite in on his torso before he could get another shot off. Unfortunately there were two more of his buddies behind him. One shot missed, the other one caught me in the back leg I fell the cougar mind was in a panic, I trouble controlling it, it wanted to charge, but I knew I wouldn't be able to do that.

I tried to stand up, couldn't, so I just lay there playing dead. It wasn't good enough. I felt a gun to me cougar head.

"See you in Hell, Andilate." A voice said. I saw Rachel charge at him out of the corner of my eye, she was on all fours he saw her and lifted his gun to get off a head shot…

The controller was on the ground, one of his legs had been bitten clean off by a salt water crocodile, Anna!

That's my sister I said to her. As she finished the controller off.

Well I couldn't just… She noticed the bear the bear looked at her.

Who's this The both asked at the same time.

I'll tell you later, will someone get me into a room so I can de-morph. Rachel draped me over her bear shoulders, and took me back into room 402. I de-morphed first. Rachel second and Anna third. Anna looked at Rachel.

"No way, are you who I think you are?" I heard footsteps again.

"No time," I said. "Lets go." I ran over and broke a window, it was still raining, so I decided on my heron morph. Anna morphed a pelican, Rachel was forced to go bald eagle.

Let's get out of here. I said. We flew out the broken window and just missed a few more bullets shot our way.


	9. Tape Transcript 7

8:23 pm

After I was satisfied that we were far enough away I landed in a park. We de-morphed. This park was one of the three places Becky would be checking if we got separated. We may have a long time to wait so I decided to find out what was going on.

"What were you doing there?" I asked Rachel.

"Same thing you were," She said. "Trying to get the place shut down."

"Why were you alone?"

"I decided to go alone, thought it would too dangerous for us all to be leaving the valley at once."

"Whoa! Why are you all hiding in the valley."  
"You know about the Applegate project right? Me, Marco, Jake Tobias, Cassie, and Ax all wrote those books in order to warn people of the invasion, of course some of the information was false to avoid us being found, well out project was discovered, about the time Marco had to flee to the valley, when we found out that the project was compromised we cut our losses and retreated. Before they traced the books back to us.

"Most of our families made it with us, but they killed my dad, when he tried to fight them. We got there but there were too few of us to fight and, Jake didn't want to risk it." Her voice wavered a little but she had obviously put most of the pain behind her. "We have been doing our best to fight the Yerks from where we are but it's not easy. The Yerks know how we look, and are in shoot-first mode, as you saw back there.

"Anyway tell me about you, who are you guys?" Anna answered the question.

"We are the members of a strike force called 'Glass Dagger' we have been fighting Yerk invasion for a about 5 years now we started about a year after you did. My name is Anna, this is my brother Erik."

"You've been around 5 years?" Rachel said puzzled. "How come we haven't heard about you?"

"Well," I said. "As you know the Applegate project spawned several different resistance attempts, but most of them, the ones you've heard about, failed. Glass Dagger is a metaphor, it is based on a dagger that would shatter on impact leaving no trace of the weapon, at least for the type of investigative techniques they had back when a dagger was useful. Our group uses stealth mainly, until we met Becky, who you'll met in a minute, stealth was the only way we could win our battles, stealth and a whole lot of luck. Ever since we got the morphing powers we have been able to step our attacks up a notch they now think we're a well group of Andilate rouges. They haven't shown any signs of knowing we're humans, which is strange considering that they found out about you. I think it's because they regard your ability to morph as an isolated incident since so few Andalites have come to Earth and since they have a policy against giving they're technology to 'lesser beings'"

"How is it that you can morph anyway are there more Andalites here, are they going to help us?"

"Sorry, no there are no more Andalites. Becky set up an antenna that picked up Andilate transmissions we were able to make a 'blue box' from that, but our power isn't as good as yours, our morphs are a painful experience."

"Wow I never thought writing a book would make such a difference, what made you believe us any…"

"Shhhh!" I heard an approaching engine. The paneled van we had drove pulled into the park. Becky got out and used a flashlight to flash out "GD" in Morse Code. Anna, Rachel and I stood up, Becky saw us. She motioned us into the van. As we walked towards it Becky said:

"Glad to see you made it out alive, wait," She saw Rachel. "Are you who I think you are?"

Gunshots rang out. One bullet grazed my arm, we ran into the van. We each took a seat and buckled up as Becky hit the gas. We were in sparsely populated part of town. Behind us the stereotypical black tinted car was following us, two men were leaning out the window firing every chance they got, fortunately I had metal studs installed in the tires of the van, they would be hard to shoot out.

"I didn't know they tailed us, we'd better move." She said. Taking a sharp curve that knocked me into the door. Anna had crossed herself and was praying silently.

"…Mother of God, pray for us…" She murmured. I grabbed a secure cell phone and called my dorm, I said four words:

"Mission accomplished, compromised, safe-house" (that was four words right?)

"What are you guys doing ?" Rachel asked.

"These guys are from the hotel I bet, since they followed us they don't know who we are yet. Don't worry we always lose them." I said.

"Always?! You mean you've done this before?!"

"Yes, I forgot to tell you that we are a lot more aggressive than your group, which reminds me." I grabbed a pistol from under my seat put on a ski mask leaned out the window and fired off three rounds one into each from tire and one through the head of one of the shooters. Rachel gaped at me. The car reverse fishtailed and hit a tree.

"Woo hooo!" I yelled. "Who's your daddy!"

"You shot them…" I had always wondered what an Animorphs reaction would be to the way we did things, I had always thought that Rachel, if anyone, would understand our policy. "thank goodness I thought I was the only one who saw it that way."

"What way?" I asked.

"I always felt that we needed to be more aggressive, if we had, well sometimes I think we would have saved lives…" she trailed off. Becky slowed down. She pulled into a nearby junk yard. "What are we doing?"  
"We're going to dump this car, another way we've been able to avoid detection is by getting rid of the evidence of our presence. The car was picked up by a magnet and dropped into a crusher. GTA III style.


	10. Tape Transcipt 8

"Where are we going now?" Rachel asked.

"I have a safe house a few miles away." I said. "we can stay there until the heat dies down."

"how long will that take?"  
"I don't know a day, maybe two, as long as there are no other strikes from us or you they'll relax there guard." We began to walk.

"No, I need to go now the guys are waiting for me, they'll get worried…"  
"They'll have to deal with it, wait how did you get here anyway."

"Bus, I kept my face hidden so no one could see me."

"You'll never make it out of the station alive they'll be looking for you, you need to stay with us."

"Look I can't be gone more than a day before someone comes looking for me."

"Trust me you need to stay here if they get worried now, they'll be a hell of lot more worried if you have Yerk in your brain." That seemed to reach her she stopped arguing. We reached a fork where the road spilt off into a dirt one. We turned there and walked about a mile in silence when the safe house appeared.

It used to be the place where my family vacationed in the late summer. It was white with red trim two stories, had a balcony. I walked up to the large oak door and knocked. The door opened and Karen had me in a bear hug before I knew it.

"Erik, oh, Erik thank God your alive, I was so scared," She kissed me. "So scared." She put her head on my shoulder and I held her for awhile. Then she noticed the others. "How did it go?" she asked then she noticed Rachel. "Is that?"

"You know," Rachel said. "This is the most attention I've gotten in my life."

"Rachel, wow, I thought you were dead… I've always admired you I'm gad to see you, how are you and the others doing." As Rachel told her what she had told me about the Animorphs situation I looked at Karen, as I always did when I escaped a near death situation.

She had small nose and square face. Her eyes were a dark green with blue flecks in them. We had been dating since about a year after we began to fight the Yerks. Now I was positive that if it weren't for her I would have given up the fight a long time ago, and I knew she felt the same way. When either of us were feeling hopeless all we had to do was gaze into each others eyes and it would remind us of what we were fighting for.

Karen took her hand away from arm, and noticed the blood.

"Oh God, your bleeding." She said. I remembered the bullet grazing me.

"It's nothing Kare, I just got grazed by a bullet that's all."

"Morph it off quick." I knew better than to argue with her I walked into the house with Becky and Rachel gritted my teeth and morphed my cougar morph. It was Rachel's first clear look at how painful our morphs are.

"How can you guys stand that?"  
"We just do, most of the pain fades after we finish morphing." Anna said. I morphed back quickly, the cut was gone, morphing is accomplished by a DNA shift injuries are not a part of DNA so they don't follow us from morph to morph.

I looked around in the house, it was very large the living room was encircled by the upstairs. The stairs themselves were mahogany, which led up to bathroom, and four bedrooms we had. There were tow other doors in the room, one led to a kitchen the other to a bathroom. From the kitchen there was another door that led to a hall with four more bedrooms, and yet another bathroom. At the end of that hall, hidden behind a large portrait of my late parents was a staircase, this led to the roof and a hidden sniper post chances were that Amy was already up there, Amy was a fine sharpshooter. The rest of the team should have been there but I didn't see them.

"Where is everyone?" I asked.

"Sleeping," Karen said, look at the clock. I checked the large grandfather clock on the far right wall. It was 10:30, the mission had taken longer than I thought, I had a horrible sense of time, and if it weren't for Karen I would have been stuck in a morph a long time ago. "You better get to bed too. I'll let Rachel have my bed and I'll sleep on the couch."  
"Not gonna happen." I said. "You take the bed I'll take the couch." Karen didn't argue.

"Guys," Rachel said. "Can I use your shower?"

"Sure," I gave her directions and after she left I sat on the couch next to Karen. "I can't believe it, I thought the Animorphs are still going I thought they were dead."

"Erik," She said. "you remember what you've said you were going to do if you met the Animorphs?"

"Yeah, I do, I never thought it would happen and now that it has… do you think my idea would work?"

"I don't know, but the combined forces of our teams may make enough power to accomplish it."

"And if we did Erik, imagine it would be a real shot it the arm for both of us, we would be able put the Yerks against the ropes."

"Yeah I know, I'll ask her tomorrow,' I heard the shower turn off. "She's too tired today." Karen changed the subject.

"You know Erik, all of the beds here are double beds…"  
"Karen, sweetie you know how I feel about that…" me and Anna had a strict Catholic upbringing, and we both had taken our faith a lot more seriously since we began fighting.

"You know Erik, I think you're an endangered species you are the only guy I know that would turn me down when I made such an offer." She kissed me on the cheek, goodnight Erik, I love you."

"Love you too Karen." Rachel walked by, and I pointed her to the upstairs bedroom. She went upstairs without saying a word. I picked up a deerskin quilt from a nearby rocking chair got a pillow from another chair lay down on the couch and went to sleep.


	11. Tape Transcipt 9

1:11 am

Nightmares are a natural part of morphing. As a med student I had always been interested in the medical and scientific aspect of morphing, one of the things anyone who morphs finds out quick is that the humans psychological well-being is shaken by morphing, all of the bodily changes and hormone swithces not to mention the loss or gaining of different body parts, it's like going through puberty, and a pregnancy at the same time, for both men and women.

My nightmares were always rough, most of the time I'd wake up screaming and not remember what it was about. Night Terrors, my doctor called them, they would fragment my sleep severely, and most of the time when I woke up I'd have a horrible feeling in my stomach and it would be two hours or more before I could sleep.

Fortunately for me I was near Karen on that night, so when I woke up in panic mode, I walked into her room, opened the door and looked at her. She was wearing a light blue night gown, she had kicked the sheets half off and was shivering slightly. I walked over and put the sheets on correctly. Her hair was spread out on her pillow, she would have a time trying to tame it in the morning. I kissed her on the forehead and my panic subsided, I went downstairs and back to sleep.

7:45 am

I woke up to smell of cooking bacon. Since I heard the shower running I decided to go ahead and eat. The best way to describe what I saw when I went in was this: picthcure the toughest looking black man you've seen, now picture him in an apron and oven mitts. Fred was an incredible cook (something else he got from his mother I always thought). There was a TV in the kitchen a story about some hiker claiming to have seen a monster outside of Maggie Valley was on.

"Mornin', E-man." Fred said . Becky, Anna and Rachel were still asleep a but everyone else was sitting at a table and eating. Jerry had a smile on his face, apparently he had done a lot of tampering with the medical records of hotel employees.

"Oh boy," I said. "You didn't give one of the hotel members Anthrax did you?" Jerry chuckled.

"Nah, but I gave the bastards enough communicable diseases to have them monitored my the CDC. Oh and by the way, we succeeded, you little firefight in there cost the hotel a lot of it's reservations, now only stoners and hookers want in and the Yerks have no need to infest a hooker. Chalk another win for the Glass Daggers!"

"Great," I said. "Now were twenty-_two_ and 183."

"Hey , by the way is it true, is Rachel here?"

"Yeah, it's true."

"Good lord, the Animorphs still around who'd ev thunk it?"

"Erik, are you going to ask her?" Amy asked.

"Ask me what?" Rachel said. She came in wearing some of Karen's clothes.

"I need to ask you, and the others something," I said. "We need your help."

"To do what?"

"Take out the Yerk Pool."


	12. Tape Transcipt 10

"What do you mean take out the Yerk Pool." She asked. The Yerk Pool is a place where a Kanadra, a false sun, fills a pool of water with specialized radiation that Yerks must recharge every three days.

"He means," Jerry said. "take it out, go in there with guns blazing plant some C-4 hightail it out of there, press the detonator, BOOM! Blow the little fuckers back to Hell." Rachel didn't know what to say, it had obviously caught her off guard.

"I, well, I really don't know. I mean that's a big decision I guess I'd have to talk it over with rest of us."

"Yeah that makes sense." I said. "Tomorrow I'll let you leave and go to the valley, me and Karen can go with you so we can hammer out a game-plan."

"Um, Erik, right? I don't know if showing up with 2 more morph-capable people is a good idea, Jake is on edge right now, and I don't want to put too much stress on him…"

"Look," I said. "We need to do this, even if you won't help us with that our combined forces could still do a lot more damage if we worked together."

"I'll have to think about it." She said.

"Think quickly," Jerry said. "Fuck!"

"Huh?" I said, Jerry may not be squeaky clean in his language but he wasn't known for yelling out curses at random. Jerry pointed to the TV. When I saw what he had seen I said the same thing. A woman was standing in front of the hotel we had attacked.

"Last night there was a commotion at this local hotel. At about 6:00 pm this hotel was attacked by two armed suspects attempting to sabotage the hotel's opening. Witnesses say that the group consisted of one man and one woman. Both of these killed several hotel security staff with what appears to be animal based cutting objects, most of the dead were disemboweled." The woman had a look in her eye that said that she was happy to have given all of her viewers the excellent piece of information right as they were eating they're scrambled eggs.

"While there are no reports on the identity of the male suspect, police are looking for a white female," a police sketch of Rachel appeared on the screen. "about 211 pounds 5'6 to 5'9 with blue eyes and shoulder length blonde hair. The suspect is considered armed and dangerous anyone with information should call the police the hotel owners are offering a $300,000 reward for information leading to her arrest and an additional $200,000 if she is convicted." Jerry switched off the TV and slinked towards the phone.

"Not funny." Karen said.

"This could be a problem." I said.

"Could be?" Rachel asked. "This has just taken public transportation off my list of ways to get home, now I have to fly there."

'Whoa, fly? How far is it?" I asked.

"Maggie Valley," she said. "It's about a days flight away."

"Me and Karen have to go with you then." I said. "Karen has a good sense of time, flying that far in such little time it's easy to go over two hours and get stuck in a morph." Rachel's eyes had a faint trace of tears at that mention.

"I guess your right," She said. "but don't expect a warm welcome from Jake."

"Okay then," I said. "we'll leave tonight."

8:30 am

Becky and Anna got up a little later, they didn't seem surprised about Rachel's rise to fame. They knew there was trouble when the guards saw her clearly. Rachel seemed kind of nervous about the whole thing, so I decided to show her something that may have made her feel better.

I took her into my lab hidden via another secret passage in the house. As I said earlier I was researching morphing technology. Using money from the trust fund my parents had left me I was able to get my hands on some choice lab equipment, of course it was also in a sense 'stolen' but the end justifies the means in this situation, and hey I have immunity on all crimes relating to my resistance anyway so… getting back to my point, I showed her my biggest project.

The cylinder rose from it's liquid nitrogen bath. Inside was a bright orange liquid that was barely frozen despite the -300 degree temperature.

"What is this?" She asked.

"This," I said "is a mixture of several different chemicals that have high radiation outputs, it is safe for human or animal use and It has the ability to flush out the DNA strain of impurities."

"Come again." Rachel said.

"Sorry couldn't resist using the doc talk, this is a drug that may be able to release a person from a _nothlit _state." I let it sink in. Her eyes widened, she smiled, then laughed a happy laugh.

"Are you serious, does it work?"

"I haven't tested it on anyone yet, but I have used blood samples and computer model testing, chances are it does work."

"Oh God, oh thank God," her voice lowered, she seemed to be talking more to herself than anyone me. "I knew it, I always told him there was a way to help him, yes oh this is wonderful…"

"Now Rachel, I have to tell you that one of the side affects is that Tobias will have to re-acquire all of his morphs, if it works, and there's no guarantee it will, but Rachel there is a very good chance I can make Tobias human again." I had done what I wanted to do, Rachel has cheered up a lot after I brought her back up stairs. In addition to helping out a person in need I now had a bargaining chip to help cement support from Rachel. I pressed a button on the computer in the room and the container sank back into its bath.


	13. Tape Transcript 11

The attack came at about nine pm. Me and Karen were set to leave with Rachel in an hour. Every one but Anna, who was on lookout was sitting down in the living room. I was sitting on the couch holding hands with Karen and watching a re-run of _Mad TV _when I saw the lights I had installed around the dirt road that led to the house flash on.

"What the?" I grabbed a radio and contacted Anna who was in the crow's nest. "Anna can you see anyone coming up." I knew Anna was now scaning the road with binoculars.

"There's one truck pulling up, may be a lost hunter or… shit! There are two trucks, now three, four…"

"Can you see who's in them?"

"Yeah, oh lord, Erik they are armed I say again they are armed, we gotta get out of here."

"Stay calm everyone!" I said. Trying to calm myself. "Rachel, can you take us all to the valley?"

"I don't think Jake would like it but… I can't leave you here, follow me." She went towards the door.

"Wait!." I said. I ran through the secret door and into my lab, knowing that the cure I had wouldn't work if it was heated to room temperature I copied all files of my research onto a disk and ran out of the lab. When I came back up everyone was already in their various owl morphs.

I decided to morph the great horned owl, I began to shrink first, the pain of my bones decreasing in size was intense, my nose and mouth fused together to form a beak, this is one of the worst pains someone can experience, feathers began to break out on my body. My neck sank lower into me shoulders and my head rounded. My feet began to curve until they were talons, my eyes expanded and became the eyes of the owl.

Fully owl now each of us flew out an open door. As we escaped the door was broken down as we flew away I knew that this would be last time I would see the house. I risked a glance backward and saw that the Yerks had taken out flamethrowers and set fire to the house. I thanked my lucky stars I had carried a copy of the formula form my computer. The materials to make it were stored in a fireproof in the lab, which itself was built so a fire from the house shouldn't spread to it.

Even if the Yerks found the lab they wouldn't know what the chemicals were for and it was likely that they'd have little to no use for them, hopefully they wouldn't take them. We were in the air flying over the woods, our owls eyes made the night as bright as day so navigating was easy, I just hoped that no one in the group was wearing night vision goggles that would allow them to see 9 owls flying in the same direction.

11:00 pm

We landed and demorphed to recharge the 2 hours time limit. As humans it was pitch black and I could barely see anybody.

"Is everyone OK?" I asked. I heard affirmations from people all around. My next task was to check the pocket of my morphing suit: the disk was still there, thank God for small favors.

"What happened back there?" Rachel asked. James who rarely spoke during meetings or missions answered the question in his deep voice.

"Yerks must have tracked you to the house, they were attempting to remove you from it forcibly, and when they didn't find you, or who was protecting you they torched the place hoping that we were hiding somewhere."

"And now," Jerry said. "They're going to try and trace the house's deed to it's owner."

"I blew you're cover didn't I I'm sorry." Rachel said.

"Didn't blow a damn thing," Jerry said smiling. "The Yerks are going to run into firewall after fire wall, encryption after encryption, and then they are going to find out that the house is owned by someone who died thirty years ago, we don't call it a 'safe house' for nothing, Rachel, they won't find us."

"Just the same," I said. "I think it would be better for us to stay together, so when we reach valley we're going to stay there until we get a definite answer from Jake."

"If he lets you stay." Rachel said.

"Whoa, what the fuck, you're kidding me," Jerry said. "Why on earth would we stay in a valley for crying out loud, it's them who have to stay there not us!"

"You calm down now Jerry, we don't know if your security will hold up, you forget that the Yerks have good technology they may be able to trace it to us, I don't' know how, but they found out where Rachel was and we… Hey wait a minute, how did they find out where Rachel was?" Becky spoke up, squinting to see Rachel by the little light coming from the stars and moon.

"Rachel did any of the gauds get their hands on you?"

"Yeah," She said. "One grabbed my shoulder when I tried to run what of it."

"Do me a favor which shoulder?" Rachel pointed to her left one. Becky took a single match from inside her morphing suit and lit it. There was an area of Rachel's skin that was slightly discolored. "Sub dermal bug," Becky thrust the match into Rachel's shoulder.

"OW!" Rachel yelped. "What was that for?"

"Only way to disable one of those bugs is it cut it out, wait it out, or melt it. I chose to melt it."

"Wait you mean to tell me they were tracking me?"

"Yeah, they were, which means," Becky stopped realizing what this meant. "They know we're here lets move."

"Wait," I said. "If they were tracking her they may be nearby, that means that if they see a bunch of owls take off at once they'll put a shotgun to us, we need to split up, Rachel tell, Anna, Jerry, and Fred how to get to the valley, Karen and Rachel, you'll fly with me, Amy you'll fly with Fred and James you'll fly with Anna and. Got it?" Everyone paired up, it was not the time to question orders. Rachel quickly told us how to get to the valley. Since it would be a day long trip she gave us each a separate place to stop and rest followed by meeting place where we would enter the valley together I didn't feel good braking the team up like this, but it had to be done. Then we split up each running in a different my team stayed where we were. One by one we got thought speak confirmations that the other groups had taken off.

"Ready to go?" I asked then I heard an approaching engine. "Shit! Looks like we're going to be fighting again…"


	14. Tape Transcript 12

I didn't know if my cougar morph had night vision so I had to go with one of the morphs that I knew had it. The list was short: wolf, lion, Tasmanian devil, and leopard, I decided on the leopard. Rachel must have acquired some new morphs because I barely saw her changing into a lioness. Karen was morphing a Jaguar.

Spots began to break out on my body my skin turned brown then thickened to form fur. Pain, my legs turned inward an I fell but this time my paws had already formed so I "landed on my feet". I grew only slightly, (the leopard I had acquired was about and inch longer than me.) My fangs came in, causing my mouth to erupt in pain, then my head changed to the head of the leopard my tail began to grow out, when I was fully morphed I climbed a nearby tree.

My leopard eyes could see clearly in the night. Rachel was already in full loin morph and ready to pounce Karen was also ready to spring. The controllers were accompanied by Hork-Baijar this time. They looked like tall lizards walking on two feet with sharp blades on there arms and legs. The human-controllers were on ATVs and were approaching fast, they were within earshot of my morph pretty quickly.

"… gonna be pissed when he finds out that the transmitter is down." I recognized the voice as the man who was so courteous to the Nam vet at the hotel.

"Hey he can't complain about it, she's likely with the Andilate rouges that have been raising Hell all over the North Carolina, they would have found the transmitter pretty fast."

'Wait, if the transmitter is down then why are we still searching?"

"Protocol check the last position the bug was in hey maybe we'll get lucky."

(Your gonna get lucky all right he he he) Karen laughed in thoughtspeak this was the first but not the last time I suspected that her and Rachel were separated at birth.

(Be careful there's Hork-Baijar there too) I said.

(That may complicate things a bit…) Rachel said, neither one of them could see what I saw since I had the best vantage point, I looked to see if the Controllers were armed, each had a pistol but nothing else, the must have been relying on the Hork-Baijar.

(Don't worry I think we can take em, there are four of them , Rachel, and Karen take them on while I take care of Dumb and Dumber on the ATV's. Stay hidden until my go.) The ATV's grew closer, closer, closer… (GO). I jumped from the tree and hit the first controller (the Nam hater) square in the back, I broke his neck with a quick bite from by mouth. The ATV careened out of control and I barely had time to jump on the next guy (who hadn't noticed what had happened in the dark since he only had head lights to run by.)

I killed him in the same way thanking God for the stalking ability of my morph. Rachel and Karen had Engaged the Hork-Baijar it was two on one but they were both managing to stay clear of the fifty odd sharp blades. That didn't last long, one of the Hork-Baijar slashed Rachel in the side, she bellowed in pain and disemboweled the creature with her right paw. The other Hork-Baijar tried to take advantage of her distraction to cut off her head but her found himself with a 100 pound leopard on his back.

(I've got this one, go help Karen) I said having to dodge the Hork-Baijar's arm blades. I dug my claws into his skin and bit his neck. I was able to snap it, then I ran over and joined Karen's fight. Karen and Rachel were each taking on one of the Hork-Baijar I climbed a tree ready to surprise attack if I needed to.

I needed to, the Hork-Baijar got in a large slash on Karen's right side he moved in to make the attack worse, I jumped form the tree and landed a neck bike on him before he knew what was happening. I looked around, listened, and smelled with my leopard senses. I got no sense of further danger, I demorphed. I ran over to Karen.

"You okay?" She was bleeding rather profusely.

(Yeah) She began to demorph. (I'm) "fine". Her face was the first to reappear. After she finished demorphing I looked over at Rachel who had also demorphed.

"We need to get to our rest site, we can't get too far behind the others."

12:00 pm

__

Near the Piedmont Mountain Region border.

We rests at an outcrop with three caves, it was next to a river so we had a supply of water. We watched in shifts I had the first. It was difficult since I was tired. The waters soft gurgle almost put me to sleep several times but I jerked back awake.

"I'm here to relive you." Rachel said. She had come up behind me and almost scared the life out of me.

"Sorry," She said, I got up to leave but she stopped me. "hey I have to know what made you believe in the Yerk invasion?"

"When my parents were killed."

"I'm sorry, do you mind if I ask…"

"Why weren't they infested? My family has had a history of hearing problems, my father was a doctor and had created an inner ear hearing aid it, unfortunately for them, blocked the ear canals to Yerk entry, since the placement is permanent both of my parents had to be killed. Everyone in my group has that implant now, most of which are inactive."

"Are you saying?"

"Yes for all purposes me and Anna are deaf, but the hearing aids make it impossible to detect. We can hear just as well as you can."

"Don't' they pop out when you morph?"

"No, prosthetic attachments seem to follow from morph to morph, I think it's because the technology was designed to keep an Andilate's interpreter on during morphs."

"So you can't be infested…"

"I don't have anymore implants, I was lucky to get enough for my team, the Yerks destroyed them all, but yes I am immune to infestation, that's why I'm more likely to split up my team, I know that they can't be infested, you know I still didn't believe it entirely even after my parents were killed, it was made to look like a random street crime. I must have suspected something because I hid a lot of the implants that my parents had made.

"The thing that really brought it home, was when I saw the Yerk Pool, I found the entrance by following the cops that were supposedly investigating my parents murder they went into a Yerk Pool entrance, I heard the screams for myself, I saw the cages, saw entire families there crying, begging… It was after that, that I decided to fight.

"I met a man named Danny Esten he used to work for the CIA and he found out about the invasion in about the same way I did. He would get me information on Yerk activities, me and the rest if my team, which was short of Becky then, would sneak into various Yerk controlled business and the like, we'd mess up data, destroy records."

"Carry out assassinations." Rachel said.

"It was the only was for us to fight, we couldn't morph back then."

"I understand, I don't think I have the right to judge anyway. "

"Well," I went back to my story. "After we found Becky we were able to get the ability to morph, we went after the Yerks even more directly attacking full force on large projects, most of the time we lost, the few victories we won were short-lived, as you know the bastards are remarkably resilient, finally we decided it was best for us to go for an all out full front attack, but we weren't strong enough, I hope that you and the others will join us, with 14 morph capable people we may just stand a chance…"

"Save that speech for Jake and get some rest, you're probably going to need it. Jake is defiantly not going to be happy about me bringing home 8 people who somehow gained the ability to morph."

"Hey maybe we can just morph into dogs and you can say we followed you home." She smiled. I got up and went to sleep.


	15. Tape Trancscript 13

__

Maggie Valley, NC Approximately 85 miles from the Tennessee Border

February 5th

7:22 am

We were up bright and early the next morning the trip to the meeting place took about four hours, when we reached the area where we were set to meet long after the others. We landed and demorphed.

"I was beginning to wonder whether or not you guys had survived the night," Jerry said. "_That _would have left us in a pretty pickle. We'd be here in the middle of the Appalachians with no clue where we are and have our guide gone, meaning we'd have to travel all the way back in Yerk…"

"That's enough Jerry." I said. I looked at where we were. We were on a mountain stream. The stream ran by us and to a large stone that was set in front of fifty foot high rock wall. There was something off about the set up but I couldn't put my finger on it. It was cold, and the sky was threatening to rain.

"So where's the entrance?" I asked.

"Your looking at it." Rachel said, she then walked up to the large stone in front of the wall and walked right through it. She popped her head back out, "Chee hologram." She popped it back in. One by one we each followed her through the boulder, I suddenly realized what was weird about the boulder and stream, the stream seemed to disappear into the boulder .

I was the last to enter, as I approached the rock I felt strange approaching it, my body wasn't used to walking through what seemed to be a solid rock. When I stepped through I came out near the edge of a water fall. Walked to the edge where I saw my teammates standing looking over it, I went to see what they were looking at, and it took my breath away.

The valley was cut in two by the stream, which had thickened into river, On one side I saw a group of makeshift huts which were obviously the Animorphs' homes. The huts seemed to be only big enough for one person, which must mean that there were more huts somewhere in valley. On the other side I saw lots of Hork-Baijar, most were full grown but there were also lots of little ones running around playing in the water.

I saw a group of teenage-looking Hork-Baijar playing a game that looking similar to baseball, after looking closer I realized it was baseball. The Hork-Baijar were tree tenders by nature so I wasn't surprised to see that several trees had been made into homes for the aliens.

The grass was a deep green, and the water seemed to sparkle even in the dim light. The air seemed to be extremely clean, when I inhaled it felt like I had been breathing in a smoke filled house for the last 22 years of my life.

"Beautiful isn't it?" Rachel said. "The Hork-Baijar take good care of the trees they keep them healthy and that makes the oxygen here more rich. The trees you see now are only part of a large group of them. This place is what I think Heaven must look like, if it even exists… well there's no sense in dragging it out lets go see my cousin" We walked down a gentle slope that led to the Hork-Baijar's side of the valley. Just before we reached level ground one of the Hork-Baijar approached us.

"Stop!" He said. "No enter here, stand until I get leader." He walked off.

"Do what he says," Rachel told us. "You don't want to have these guys mad at you. And when Jake comes out he'll be angry just let me handle it." We didn't have to wait long for anyone to show up, Jake came up rather quickly he looked angry.

"What," he was breathing deeply like he was trying to keep himself from yelling. "the… fuck… do… you… think… you're… doing…"

"Jake they needed my help, there home was destroyed."

"I… don't… care… you… should… never… bring… anyone… here… they… may… be… infested."

"If they were then we'd already be dead." Jake lost it.

"AND HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THAT, HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT THEY'RE NOT JUST WAITING TILL NIGHTIME TO CALL IN A BUG FIGHTER, OR A BLADESHIP AND BLOW THIS PLACE TO BITS! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE THE STUPIDEST PERSON I KNOW, FIRST YOU GO OFF ALONE WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE…"

"I didn't tell you, because I knew you would think it wasn't safe, this needed to be done Jake…"

"AND NOW YOU BRING BACK 9 MORE MOUTHS TO FEED, 9 MORE PEOPLE WE HAVE TO LOOK OUT FOR, WE'RE NOT RUNNING A FUCKING HALFWAY HOUSE HERE…"

"Jake," Rachel said. "they are not going to be a liability, they are just like us, they want to help us fight ."

"Oh woopdie do, we've got civilians in leotards and bike shorts who want to… oh shit, OH DON'T FUCKING TELL ME THAT YOU GAVE THEM THE FUCKING MORPHING CUBE, THAT'S THE LAST THING WE NEED IF THE YERKS…"

"For your information," I said, not being able to take Jake's tirade any longer. "We got the power on our own, and I can assure you, that we will be a very useful addition to your group…"

"YOU CAN SHUT THE HELL UP I WASN"T TALKING TO YOU, AND…"

"Jake," Another voice said. "Calm down, we can hear you at the other end of the…" Cassie, noticed us she laughed. "Rachel came back with a few new boyfriends huh?"

"They need a place to stay." Rachel said. "The Yerks may know who they are."

"You can stay here," Cassie said smiling. "if you don't mind living in the caves over there." She gestured to another rock wall honeycombed with large caves.

"Hell, no they're leaving, they might be controllers…" Jake began but Cassie cut him off.

"Jake if they were then they would have killed or infested Rachel, and by now we'd all be dead, this is not how the Yerks work. They need someplace to stay, and we can't just kick them to the curb, they came here from Charlotte imagine the walk… wait how did?"

"We can morph," Jerry said. "long story tell you later."

"Anyway," Cassie said. "You need to calm down nothing bad is going to happen." She took his hand and stared into his eyes. "Please." Jake sighed.

"OK, OK, OK, but you'd better stay out of the way."

"Listen you little fucker, I'll do what I please, if you don't like it tough shit I'm here to try and help you, I was expecting a warmer welcome." was what I would have said if Karen hadn't put her hand over my mouth.

"I'll show you the caves," Cassie said. "Rachel you might want to go see Tobias, I don't think he's slept a wink since you didn't come back yesterday."

"Rachel!" Tobias, who was in his human form ran toward her, there was a makeshift bridge over the river but Tobias just ran into the water. Rachel met him halfway, she ran into his arms and kissed him in a real _Forest Gump _ moment. Cassie smiled at this, then led us over to the walls.

When we got closer I saw the caves were more than big, the were immense there were about twenty of the arranged in rows on the wall, make-shift ladders had been carved into the rock to reach the higher ones. The caves themselves were at least twenty feet high by 80 feet wide and 40 feet deep into the rock. There would be enough space to live comfortably, at least under the circumstances.

"I'll get Erik to bring some blankets and pillows," Cassie said. "It gets cold here at night, as a matter of fact it may snow this evening, hope to God it's just rain. You each can have your own 'room' I suggest you ask some of Hork-Baijar to make you a door , because if it snows you'll want to be able to shut yourself in.

"Oh rude of me, my name is Cassie."

"We already know," Becky said. "We're big fans of the Applegate project."

"Wow," Cassie said. "I thought that when they killed Rachel in the books and gave morphing power to controllers, that people would think we were dead, if they believed the story was real at all. What are your names anyway.

We each introduced ourselves. Cassie shook our hands and smiled.

"Well pleased to meet you, I can't wait to here about how you got the morphing power but… I'll wait till tonight's meeting you all need to get settled down see you soon." She turned to leave. "Oh almost forgot if you feel sick you can go to see the Hork-Baijar doctor. He just came in and is very good, he's a _seer_ you know."

"Wait, a _doctor,_" Jerry said. "One of the things is a _doctor _what are you going to tell me next? He's Roman Catholic like Anna and Erik?"

"I think he's Irish Catholic really, Hork-Baijar _seers _seem to take to Christianity pretty quickly, Toby is a Methodist, they watch sermons on the TV we have here." Jerry seemed amazed and I had to admit I was too. You really didn't think of religion when you thought of aliens.

I chose a cave next to Karen's on the third layer, nobody chose one on the bottom, close to the ground was not where we wanted to be when/if it snowed. I sat down in the cave. It was a lot darker and cooler but there was a small indentation where a fire could be made.

I didn't feel like making a fire, I just sat down and thought. Things had started off on bad terms with Jake, and if he was anything like the guy described in the Applegate project I knew they wouldn't get much better. I hoped the pillow would get here soon I needed to sleep, but when I did lay down I fell asleep on the hard rock ground.


	16. Tape Transcript 14

4:22 pm

When I woke up I had a blanket draped over me and a pillow put under my head. There was also a door over the cave's entrance, I walked out and looked over the colony. The sky looked a lot more threatening now, I could feel the weight of incoming bad weather in the air.

A Hork-Baijar was waiting outside my door.

"Afternoon sir, Rachel call you, ask to attend meeting, go to largest hut on other side of river." He said. I noticed that I was the only one still asleep. Afraid I'd be late and miss something I ran towards the hut. Rachel met me halfway there.

"Wait a second," She said. "I'm sorry for the way Jake acted towards you, he's had rough though, most of our missions have failed miserably and he's taking it hard, he's had to be even more cautious that usual because he's afraid one of will be killed, I think he's a bit too cautious but, look Erik we've been planning a big mission, one that may help us out a lot, it may even turn the tables, it's not like yours but it may work, I think we're going to need your help though. That's why I asked you to come here, Jake may give you some trouble but he'll give in. He knows he needs help and he'll accept it eventually, just wait him out.

"Wait with your friends, and I'll try to talk him into letting you come in." She walked off, I saw where my team was waiting and went over to them. It wasn't long before Jake came out Any thought that Jake had warmed up to us, or that Rachel had softened him up was dashed when Jake told us to: "Keep our interfering asses out of his meeting."  
"Jake," I said. "I know you don't like having 8 other humans you don't know very well joining your fight but I assure you that we can help you, and I also can tell you that you need our help."  
"Really? Because I don't have any evidence that you can even fight, or that you've done a bit of good." Fred decided to fill Jake in on what we'd done, OK that's understatement, one of the things you don't want to do is imply that Fred hasn't been doing a good job, he'll tell you real quick what he's done. Fred grabbed Jake by his shirt and slammed his back into the hut.

"For your information white boy," He sneered into his face. "we've done a hell of a lot of good, break down in Yerk interstate communication: us, Sharing leaders being accused of sexual molestation: us. Death of Visser 8, us." As if to emphasize his points he slammed Jake into the wall after every "us".

"Who's Visser 8 we've never heard of him." Fred slammed him into the wall again.

"You're damn right you haven't, that's because he was gunned down by Amy here as he was leaving a Yerk pool location. We have as much a right to be here as you do, we are trying to help you, so will you please just let us in." He dropped Jake, Jake caved deciding it wasn't worth arguing with us. (or possibly having to fight Fred.)

"Okay you can go in, but if you hit me again I'll drive you all away with the Hork-Baijar, and I mean that." Fred looked like he was ready to hit Jake against the wall a few more times but resisted We entered the hut and the meeting began. Erek, a member of an android race known as the Chee began.

"OK I'm glad to see we have some new members so I'd like for you to introduce yourselves to the group." I stood up and introduced my group and told them our story. When I got to the part about intercepting Andalites transmissions I noticed Ax (the only Andilate member of the Animorph team.) stiffen slightly. When I finished my story I sat down. Marco clapped sarcastically.

"Four more years, Four more years!" He chanted, earning him a dirty look from Rachel. And a middle finger from Jerry. Erek stood back up.

"With 8 new morph-capable members," He said. "This may make our attempts here easier. Now to fill in the new guys us Chee have been watching the Yerks closely and have been trying to find areas to hit. We have been able to find the location of a Yerk database. It's hidden under the guise of an internet company. The business has it's regular operators and IT guys working 9-5 but in the center of the building" He stopped and held out his hand, the hologram that he emitted changed into a one story square building. A red dot appeared in the center. "Is what they say is the main transmitter for E-mails and the like, but we think it might actually be a listing of every human controller in America.

"If we could get our hands on a copy of this it would let us know what we're up against. And it would give us a chance to warn other people, particularly key members of government. Now security is pretty tight, visitors can't get past the first of four areas. In order to get there we need to go into the bathrooms, which are safe, no cameras, and morph you'll need to fight your way into the main room to get the information, this won't be easy but with our newest arrivals it may work out.

"If we get in there we'll have a problem though, the list is likely encrypted there is no way we'll be able to get into it in a timely manner, so we need to hope that someone got sloppy and left a password hanging around, if not then we'll have to catch someone and force them to comply and that will increase the likelihood that we get caught and that…"

"I can take care of the password." Jerry interrupted.

"What do you mean?" Erek asked.

"I'm a hacker, I can get into any system in ten minutes max."

"Okay then we'll need someone to guard him and make sure he gets in there, Jake, you think you can handle that…"

"We'll handle it," I said. "All I need you to do Jake is make sure no one comes into the computer room while he's in there."

"Whoa, what in the Hell makes you think anyone of you coming with us?" Jake asked.

"The fact that you need Jerry with you, and the fact that I don't trust anyone further than I can throw em until they prove themselves to me, the only one of you that I'd trust to guard Jerry is Rachel, no offense guys," I said when Cassie looked hurt. "you guys need us anyway, there is not way that you are going to be able to bust through with only 6 people"

"Burst through?" Cassie said. "why can't we just sneak in?"

"Fumigation,." Erek said. "They have an exterminator come in and fumigate the place every week, using a special Yerk formula, harmless to anything higher that rodents, but it would kill you the moment we went into any insect morph."

"So we have to burst in full force? Is that worth it?" Cassie asked, then she asked the question that had been bothering me. "What if this is a trap I mean a database with every controller on it, sounds a bit too convenient for me."

"Well," Erek said. "I know it seems that way but we've checked and re-checked I think this is real. Are you going to go through with this?" Jake didn't seem to take long to think about it.

"Yeah, I'll do it."

"Erik?"

"we're in." I said. "when do we leave?"

"Tomorrow. We'll need to take a train. Meeting adjourned." As we walked out I pulled my team aside for another meeting. We sat down outside of Karen's cave. The fading sunlight set the mood perfectly as each face was dimmed by a shadow. James said what we were all thinking.

"Database that could tell us who we can trust or not, in an area within a few hours of here, smell like an ambush to you?" He asked. Amy spoke next.

"I know and even if it isn't how do we know this isn't a red herring, you know, how do we know that the information is actually accurate the whole thing stinks to high heaven. Have the Chee lost their touch or something?"

"Well no," Erek said, startling me so badly that I started to go into my Jaguar morph instinctively. "But I am impressed that you noticed that, Jake's gotten to the point where he just goes where I tell him to." I had begun to reverse the changes my morph had begun. To put the feeling in perspective, imagine breaking a bone clean in two, resetting it without morphine, and then breaking and resetting it again all in about thirty seconds.

"We," Erek was still saying. "Have enough moles in the Yerk army to know that this information is real, I mean you would need a database somewhere right, and blade ships can't have them because they're all armor and weapons. Bug fighters are too small and combustible, and pool ships, well they say that there's only one of them for every 2 invasions so that wouldn't be possible.

"As for the accuracy we're going to check whatever we get against a list of known controllers if even one of them isn't on it then we'll dump the list. I can assure you Erik, that this is not a suicide mission. Plus the security, I mean it is too much to just be a front for a trap, there is something in there that they don't want anyone to see." I looked Erek dead in the eyes.

"Erek, if you turn out to be lying to me I will make you pay," I said. "do you understand? If one person dies, on this mission, one person, then I'll take it out of you ass, or whatever you androids have. I am trusting you and that isn't something I do much with people I just met, the only reason I'm even sending my team on this mission is that you need Jerry, and I don't send my teammates into battle alone if I can help it."

"You have it on my honor that no one will be killed." I decided to trust him, and he kept his word, come to think of it this was the last mission I was on with no casualties.


	17. Tape Transcript 15

__

5:22 am

"I honestly thought I had gotten used to early mornings, I mean when we first got here I was up at 3 am because every sound I heard I was like 'ah it's the Yerks, take the children!'" Marco was saying, I needed some humor so I said

"What kids? You don't even have kids."

"Yeah but they don't know that." I laughed, we were waiting near the exit to the valley, most of my team, besides Jerry who was still asleep, was already waiting. So far only Marco had shown up from the other team. It was still dark last night it had rained a little so the air was even colder.

"What's taking the others so long," Amy asked. "And where's Jerry, didn't Erik specifically say 5:30, it's, well I don't have a watch but it's got to be time for them to show up…" Jerry came running up the side of the cliff, when he got to us he started panting.

"Sorry… overslept… didn't …mean to…"

"That's OK Jerry, hey Marco how long will we need to travel for?"

"Well," Marco said. "the station is in the nearby city, so I guess it will take bout an hour maybe two by air."

"Now are we going to stowaway on the train or do we have tickets?" Marco smiled.

"Chee got us first class baby, I'm gonna eat so much cheese…" A comotion interrupted our conversation. Jake, Cassie and Tobias (in hawk form) were walking towards us and Rachel was at their heels. It was obvious she and Jake were arguing and that they had been for a long time.

"Damn it Jake you are not going to keep me out of this one, I am _not _going to sit on my ass while you guys are fighting…"  
"You could have gone on this mission if you hadn't gotten all pigheaded and left without my permission then you wouldn't be one of North Carolina's most wanted, but now your face is all over the TV and if you stick your nose out of this valley you'll get arrested and then infested…"  
"I can take care of myself Jake, I handled myself well at the hotel, with only Erik and his sister, I think I can handle myself with 11 other members fighting next to me…"

"I do not care, it is too risky, you could endanger the whole mission because they know who you are, and if we are seen with you then we'll all be discovered and it's game over you are staying here." Jake said with a tone that said he was finished with this conversation.

"Oh and I suppose you're going to make me stay here?"

(Rachel,) Tobias said. (Please, we don't need…) he finished the rest in private, Rachel must have listened because she stopped fighting. She watched as we stepping beyond the hologram and into the real world. As we left the first few flakes of snow began to fall.

I focused on my buzzard morph. I shrank, again the pain of bone collapsing on itself my began to lengthen and I had trouble figuring out which hurt worse. My face fused together to form my beak my eyes became a bird's eyes, then the sense of smell kicked in and I could smell a nearby dead body. I fought the vultures brain and was able to avoid running at it.

We were traveling as vultures because they were more likely to travel in groups. We all flew into the air. Flying is one of the most exhilarating experiences man could ever feel the wind at your face , seeing the ground below you… well I couldn't see much because the clouds were blocking my view. I dove back below the clouds so I could see where I was going. The other Animorphs had gone into bird of prey morphs, they were attracting attention to themselves, I told Jake about this in private thought-speak and he responded in public thought-speak.

(Fuck off Bishop I'll take care of my team you take care of yours).

(very well then, dumbasssayswhat)

(What!?) Being so low made flying more difficult since there were few if any thermals around. We had to stop only once to recharge our time limits, then we reached the outskirts of the city. We morphed human and went into the town. I told Jake that I had to take care of something to no one would notice I had left the college and broke off from the group. While they continued to the station I went to an old warehouse.

I was fortunate to have planned ahead, the night that I met Rachel I had called Danny, he had set up a dead-drop in a warehouse, it was a ways away from the train station so I knew I had to hurry. I got to the warehouse and entered it. There was a rank stench of gasoline that made my eyes water.

I found what I was looking for quickly, it was a large green box hidden under a car it contained $500 One trench coat, a .9 mm pistol with holster, 22 clips with 15 rounds each, and a belt of flash-bang grenades. Each had a stretchable band so that I could carry them over from human to cougar, or any other battle morph, except for my snake morphs.

There were dead drops like this hidden all over North Carolina Danny was good at hiding them most every major city had a box like this and a sniper rifle for Amy hidden somewhere in it.

I put on the items and left. I caught a cab to the station and paid the driver. The others were already waiting for us.

"Whooo look there we've got Neo from the Matrix." Marco said. "Why are you wearing that?"

"I wear it to protect myself." My team members knew this meant that I was armed to the teeth. The intercom announced that our train was leaving. We went to the boarding platform and I saw a metal detector. When I walked through the alarm went off, I handed the guard the rest of the $500 I had left and I walked though without hindrance.

On the train I made sure to sit next to the members of my group, so I could discuss the mission with them. Jake and the others were nearby but were out of ear shot.

"Okay guys," I said . "I'm the only one armed here so I want the rest of you in morph all the time no exceptions, you run low on time you demorph then demorph immediately, I don't care what Erek said, I'm not morphing in a Yerk stronghold, I plan morph in an alley or something, we then rush in after the Animorphs start.

"Jerry you stick with me and Fred, we'll clear a path for you, Amy do have any sniper rifles hidden near the area?"

"I don't have any near where we're going to, but I do have one nearby the station…"

"No time then you stay with the others in wrecking the place, attack everyone, I want this to look like we're trying to sabotage it not like a recon mission so…"

"When were you planning n discussing this strategy with me?" Jake asked, he had moved to a seat right behind mine without me noticing.

"Um, never." I said.

"I thought as much, listen buddy, if you think you're going in there and shooting the place up with your fancy pistol that you're wearing under that coat then you're dead wrong we need to fight our way there and fight our way back, nothing else, I don't even think it would be good for you bring your entire team, just bring 4 including Jerry and I don't want any collateral damage no human casualties."

"Ah ha, I don't' take orders from you," I said. "We're all going in, we're doing it my way and whoever gets in my way on a mission dies, it's a reality of war."

"I don't think so, as long as you live with me you obey my rules, I'm doing this the way _I _always do it."

"_Fat lot of good it did you…_" Jerry muttered.

"Was I talking to you?" Jake said.

"That's enough!" Becky said. "come on you two if we keep on fight each other we can't fight the Yerks, can't you two just save the fighting for after we get out of mortal danger?" Becky made a good point and accentuated it with her trademark smile that pretty much dissolved any feelings I had of ripping Jake's voice box out.

"Fine," I said. "I'll do it your way, but if my team is in danger they're getting out in any way they need to, I'm not losing one of my men to your pacifism." The train went through a tunnel. When we emerged Jake had moved back to his other seat, we passed the rest of the short ride in silence. We stepped off the train and left the station.

__

We decided to walk towards the office since it wasn't far. I thought that was a good idea, 4 cabs pulling into the same spot would attract unwanted attention. The office was brick on the outside with two large paneled windows that let you see into the office. Engraved on the glass were the words _Hareanet Quick and Cheap Wins the Race_. Looking in I saw that there was a large reception desk and a few potted plants, nothing much else. Jake, Cassie and Marco went into the office, Tobias stayed outside in hawk form.

(If I see backup coming I'll warn you, if I say bolt then bolt because you don't want to know what it feels like to face a SWAT team believe me.) I went into the alley between that office and a Café. I deiced Fred, Jerry, Becky, and I would be the ones to go in.

"The rest of you hang around if the cops show up…" I took off my belt and gave them the flash bangs and the pistol. "Give em hell, Amy, go get your sniper rifle from the dead drop, and get a good spot, but don't shoot any cops unless you have too, I think we all have enough deaths on our souls as it is. The Jerry Fred Becky, lets go."

Fred morphed first, he got skinny, very skinny, and he began to grow until he was about 15 feet long, his head extended (I saw tiny tears in his eyes from the pain) in a snakes head, his eyes shrunk and lost their lids. Fangs grew in his mouth, scales broke out all across his body, he was soon fully a spitting cobra.

Becky began to morph her face pushed out first, she literally screamed but by then it was the roar of the salt water crocodile. She began to grow, and get scaly, her legs shrank and teeth grew in her knew gator mouth. Her tail grew out of her and her middle expanded, soon I was caught between two of the most dangerous reptiles in the world.

"Since we have a reptile theme today…" Jerry said. He turned gray, and grew scales, his mouth widened and grew sharp teeth the skin on the bottom of his neck grew out. He grew a tail. Soon he had entered his Komodo Dragoon morph.

"Not much for reptiles myself." I said. I began to grow, then my legs turned inward I caught myself again but broke my wrist while doing it. Fortunately my paws came in and repaired the wound. My tail appeared and my fangs grew in. My ears migrated upward, fur began to sprout all over my body. My ears became a cougar's ears my claws came in me nose changed and my eyes became a cougars eyes.

(All right,) I said. (Everybody ready?)

(Ready) Jerry, Becky and Fred said.

(Then lets go kick some Yerk ass)


	18. Tape Transcript 16

(Next Chapter)

8:00 am

We ran out of the alley and into the office. The secretary looked shocked to say the least at seeing a big cat a snake and a komodo dragoon enter then she got over her shock and pulled out a pistol aiming at Fred's head. Fred responded by squirting his venom directly into her eyes. Her shot went harmlessly into a glass window shattering it. The sectary fainted.

At that time a wolf emerged from the ladies room .

(Nice, morphs guys.) She said. A Bengal tiger and a gorilla emerged from the men's room.

(They ran out of toilet paper I'm MAD.) Marco said then he saw Fred. (Arrg did you _have _to be a snake?)

(Yeah I did.) Fred said.

(Okay let's go) Jake said. (the computer room is in the center area of the office we need to fight our way in I guess lets go.)

We went through a door behind the sectary's desk, we emerged in a narrow hallway with groups of door on each side. The hallway formed a rectangle, this building was built like the Pentagon. There were four layers of hallways at the center was the computer room . Jake and the others went one way and we went the other. The doors to the next section were clearly marked it wouldn't be hard navigating but…

Four Hork-Baijar appeared from one of the doors, meaning that everyone I saw from here on out had to be a controller. The first Hork-Baijar ran face first into a burst of venom, it died, Hork-Baijar are highly allergic to cobra venom. I cut the second to ribbons with my claws.

(Becky get into the security center and shut down the camera's)

(yessir) Becky ran off.

(Come on Erik save a few of them for me.) Jerry said.

(Pick up the pace and maybe I will). Seven more Hork-Baijar entered the hallway. I disemboweled one and saw Fred bite the other one. The third took a swipe at me, I ducked and bit him in the torso I ripped out his intestines and shredded them with a shake of my head. The Hork-Baijar collapsed from pain.

The fourth had been blinded by Fred and the fifth was being ripped apart by Jerry. The sixth and seventh teamed up on me. When one swiped at me I ducked but the other one got me on my shoulder, it severed my shoulder and caused it fall slack rendering my front paw useless, the other Hork-Baijar got my other shoulder, it was dé·jà vu, but this time I doubted I would be saved, because Jerry and Fred had gone on down the hall and were engaged in combat with another team of Hork-Baijar.

Another slash, I felt my back leg leave my body I was fading now from blood loss, I cried for help, but knew none would come, it was over, I was going to die here, _I love you Karen_, _stay strong baby, I'll always be with you…_ I waited for the final slash to come…


	19. Tape Transcript 17

9:25 am

It didn't come. _What are you bastards wating for? HUH! Go on KILL ME! _I wondered what had taken them so long. I felt my life leaving me, were they watching me suffer?

(I don't want to kill you.) A voice… Rachel. I felt like something was standing over me. (Demorph quickly while I can block you from view. I began to demorph, it was hard at first since I was in a daze, but then the pain hit and I snapped back. I had to morph quickly, once I reached human form I began to go back to cougar. I was back in morph quickly and Rachel stood up.

She was in her grizzly bear morph her bulk had covered me while I morphed.

(what are you doing here?) I asked.

(I stowed away on board the train, lets just say they had a rodent problem for awhile, hey where's the rest of your team.)

(They ran ahead, they should be in the second area by now,) I switched to public thoughtspeak. (This is burning cougar continue as planned I'll catch up). Rachel and I had little trouble finding the door into the next area. We just followed the dead Hork-Baijar.

(Hey I don't now if you meant to but that thing you thought about Karen came out in thoughtspeak, ) Rachel said. (She means a lot to you huh?) Another group of Hork-Baijar appeared.

(Let's talk about this later.) I pounced on one of the four and Rachel tore through another one. The one I pounced on had a crushed ribcage he wouldn't be getting up anytime soon. I went for the other one and half severed his head with a bite to the throat. I saw the door to the third area. I head the sounds of battle, then… TEESEW, a dracon beam.

(AHH) Fred yelled. We burst through, there were four Hork-Baijar two were fighting Jerry (and losing). And two had dracon beams as well as a belt of grenades. Fred had been hit and looked stunned, I only hoped he had recharged his morph time. One of the Hork-Baijar picked up his Grenade and threw it.

(Shield your eye's!) I yelled. BANG, I felt rather than saw a flash of light, I opened my eyes and saw that no one had been stunned by the flash bang grenade. Rachel charged the Hork-Baijar who had thrown the grenade and knocked his head off.

The other Hork-Baijar aimed his beam at Rachel I saw it was set on kill, I wouldn't be able to get there fast enough. A loud roar sounded Jakes, arrival, he tackled the Hork-Baijar from behind the shot hit the ceiling and left an 8 foot hole in it.

(RACHEL what the FUCK are you doing here?)

(I told you I wasn't going to stay here while the others risked their lives…) I tuned them out and check on Fred. He was coming to…

(Uggg how long have I been out?)  
(Few minutes.)

(I gotta demorph.) I called Jerry, who had defeated the Hork-Baijar, over and surrounded him as he demorphed and demorphed. I heard Rachel and Jake still arguing.

(I don't know what's gotten into you Rachel but you have gone insane or something, and…)  
(Hey once you guys finish with your audtion tape for the _Jerry Springer Show_ can you think about getting back to the matter at hand.) Marco said. Marco had a Hork-Baijar head in his gorilla hand. I saw the door to the computer room.

(Me and Jerry will go in you guys stay out here and make sure no one comes in.) I said.

(Oh I just thought of something.) Jerry said. (If I demorph in there they'll know I human.)

(No they won't I got Becky to disable the cameras.) Fred said.

(All right then.) Jerry and I entered the computer room.

Once inside we both demorphed the room was a medium sized room , that was dark with a red glow. The computer was in the center of the room with a single office chair and a keyboard. It was on screen saver, (a_ hang in there_ cat) and Jerry easily bypassed the first password. The only thing on the computer was he database and it required 4 passwords.

Jerry began hacking I kept an eye on the door while listening to the keyboard tapping.

"Yeah got the first password." Jerry said. After a few more minutes.

"Second one is down." After he got the third one I heard Jakes thoughtspeak voice.

(Erik the police are coming, get out of there.) I went into my cougar morph so I could talk to him. (We can't leave Jerry's almost in. )

(No we can't risk it leave NOW that's an order.)

(I don't take orders from you, anyway Amy has her sniper rifle by now, she'll deal with…)

(What part of 'no human casualties did you misunderstand leave now, or we leave without you.) Jerry had stopped typing and morphed his komodo morph.

(Let's go if they leave us we'll never get out alive. 3 against pick a number, the odds are against us.)

(Fine!.) I nudged the door open with my nose and ran out. The trek out was easier, we ran into little resiteance. When we got to the entrance however we were met with a SWAT team.

(Oh, boy,) Jake said. (Now what?) Fighting was out of the question, there were enough automatic weapons to cause real problems, as mow us all down in a nanosecond. Becky emerged from the door behind the sectary's desk.

(Guys, we've got problems.)

(We've figured that out.) Marco said.

(No I mean worse, this whole areas gonna self destruct, we've got five minutes to get out of here.) Out side the SWAT team was debating how to est handle the situation, I could only hope that they didn't decide to shoot.

(I've got an idea, when I say run you run got it Jake?) I said.

(It'd better be a good one, I really would like to see how your gonna get us out of this one!)

(Just watch .) I said (Amy flash bangs NOW!) There were several flashes of light, the cops were stunned.

(RUN!) I yelled. We ran, we only had few seconds before the minds of the cops cleared. Somehow we made it.

11:22 am

We demorphed in an alley. I snarled at Jake.

"Jerry could have gotten in to that computer."

"And could have gotten us all blown up." As if to emphasize his point there was a loud explosion.

"It was worth the risk, anyway we had four minutes to work with, Jerry would have gotten in in 2 we'd be out in another 2, we might have made it, and even if we didn't Jerry could have uploaded the list to Erek"

"It was too much of a risk…" I looked him in the eyes.

"You know I think I liked the Yerks version of you a lot better, least that Jake would seen the advantage of having more people in there."

"You son of a bitch!" He charged at me, Marco and Cassie caught his arms and held him back. "You moron, you have no idea what kind of pressure I'm under, you see I see everyone here as a friend, I don't look at them like fucking pawns on a fucking chess board, you have no heart buddy… "

"Heart? In a WAR? Have you lost your mind? We can't look at things like that, we need to look at the whole war, not just how it affects one person!"

"What's the point of fighting if you kill who you fight for. You kill humans, they have homes families and children, don't you know what kind of sufering you cause, your just as bad as the Yerks, and you! He rounded on Rachel, you had better start listening to me, your going to get us all killed, stop the fucking Rambo shit, if I tell you stay somewhere you'd better stay!" Amy, Anna, James, and Karen arrived.

"What's going on here?" Amy asked. Jake who had been realeased answered her.

"Your 'fearless leader' here almost got us blown up!"

"Did we get the files?" Karen asked.

"No," I said. "We can thank Gandhi over here for that."

"Stop it you two!" Becky said. "You guys need to get grip! This was a bad mission, it had little chance of success anyway so lets not play the blame game now shake and make up." We shook I tried extra hard to crush Jake's hand but didn't succeed.

"Lets get back to the station." Cassie said. "We need to get some sleep."

"I have to go make a trip," I said. "you guys go ahead, I don't want to ride with Jake anyway, you know because trains go fast and have windows that a human could easily be tossed out of…" Jake flipped me off, I ignored him. "Anna, come with me." Anna kissed James and stood next to me. We both morphed buzzards and flew off. When I looked back I saw the two groups leaving. Tobias must have come up behind us at some point in human morph because he was with them, holding hands with Rachel.

We flew for ninety minutes and recharged our morph clocks.

(where are we going?) Anna asked.

(Back to the safe house, I've got to go get the supplies to make my _nothlit _cure.)

(You sure it's safe?)

(Yeah, the Yerks would have left it alone after the ATV guys got killed, they know we're not there.)

(Still it's not very safe, to go back so soon.)

(I have to get some medical supplies too, that doctor we have there is little good to us if we don't have them.)

(I saw him, he has some Hork-Baijar medicine, good stuff too, knocked my migraine out in two minutes.)

(Yeah but he still needs more than that, I get the feeling that he doesn't have a cure for everything, and I don't think he has IV's either .)

(IV's bro, why would we need them?)

(Like dad used to say better safe than sorry)

(Yeah but you carry that Mantra to extremes) I saw the ruins of the house ahead. As I thought there was no one around, to make sure we demorphed way away from the site, and walked in. Most of the house was destroyed. Anna looked like she was about to cry, our parent's portrait had been destroyed, it was ne of the few things we had left of them.

I patted her on the back. I saw that my lab hadn't been hurt, it was still in its hidden location beneath the foundation. I opened the hatch disguised as a cornerstone I jumped into the lab and picked up a bright white box. It contained the supplies I needed to remake the medicine for Tobias, I would work at that as soon as possible. I also grabbed four medical kits that contained an IV, sterile gauze, and bandages, aspirin and other assorted medical supplies.

I walked out of the lab.

"Great now how're you gonna carry them?"

"I'm gonna morph an eagle and carry them in my talons, we'll have to fly high, to make sure no one notices." We morphed again, I was a bald eagle and Anna a golden eagle we flew high to make sure no one noticed the eagle carrying a white box and four bags with the medical staff symbol on them.

3:00 pm

The flight to the Valley didn't take as long as last time since I knew where I was going. We flew Directly into the valley and landed. I demorphed first, a group of Hork-Baijar came over to great me. Toby was one of them. Toby was a _seer_ a smart Hork-Baijar, he picked up one of the bags.

"I assume you want the good doctor to take these?" He said.

"Yeah I do," I saw Anna begin to demorph. "How's Jake?"

"Mad at you, I'd steer clear of him for a couple of days."

"Erik, I… I don't" I tunred and saw Anna had gone pale. She began to fall backwards. Cassie was where we were in an instant. She caught Anna.

"What's wrong with her?" Cassie asked.

"Oh no I think she's going into morphing shock." I said and felt icy fear grab me, thank God I had brought some IV's.

"What's that?"

"You know how our morphs hurt, well sometimes the pain causes our bodies to think they're injured and the body goes into a severe state of shock, it borders on a coma," I then yelled. "Get the doctor over here," I looked at my sister's pale face, "Don't die on me sis, I need you come on."

"What's wrong?" The Hork-Baijar doctor arrived, he checked her pulse. "I'm not as good with human's as I'd like to be but I think we need get her into a bed fat."

"You me stat." I said suddenly worried.

"Yeah, don't take that as meaning I don't know what I'm doing." He picked up Anna, and turned to Cassie. "Get Erek to get me some medical supplies beyond what this kid brought. Something to treat a coma patient, because she looks like she's going into one… and you can come with me." I followed the Hork-Baijar to a large tree with a large ladder carved into it, when I went in I was surprised to see a small hospital room, of the eight beds in the tree there were two Hork-Baijar in them. They both seemed to only have minor injuries. The doctor put Anna down on the bed and asked for IV. I helped him set it up. I noticed the gloves he put on before he began the procedure covered up his arm blades.

Once the IV was set up the doctor began to ask me questions about what morphing shock was. I only had theories but he seemed to appreciate my input. The IV was doing it's work, after only a few minutes her color had come back.

"Doctor…" I began

"Don't call me doctor, I don't have an MD call me Hortana, or if you must give me a title, call _creknan _which means healer."

"_Creknan _how long do you think she's out for."

"You said when you experienced this you were out for about three weeks."

"Yes."  
"Well she's a bit smaller than you so she may take longer, I can't say for certain, I really didn't get much of a chance to practice for this since your group seems to be the only one prone to it. I will try some of my home planet herbs, who knows maybe it will work." James ran in panting.

'Anna," He ran over to the bed. "Oh no, Anna, sweetie, can you hear me." He took her hand, and spoke softly to her stroking her forehead with his other hand. Each member of our team stopped by, Jerry didn't stay long (he had been selected as a catcher for the Hork-Baijar baseball game). But he seemed worried. Fred came by with the medical supplies Erek was able to rush to us.

Becky stayed about an hour, she and Anna were close friends. Karen came by and stayed for about two hours. Finally the doctor came over to us.

"You should leave now," he said. "you've done all you can."

"I can't leave her." Both James and I said at once.

"You need to go and get some sleep if you don't you'll end up in the beds right next to her." Reluctantly we both left. James gave her a soft kiss before he left and whispered something in her ear. I left with my mind swimming.


	20. Tape Transcipt 18

5:10 pm

I went down to where the river curved in an outcropping. I sat down there and put my head down remembering what Jake had told me.

"Your just as bad as the Yerks."

"NO!" I yelled to the still cold air. (The snow had come but didn't stick) "I am NOT like them!" I put my head down again. I was murmuring to myself.

__

"It's war, you can't be nice in war not when the enemy will show you no mercy. You must fight fire with fire, they find you and your men expendable…I". I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. I looked up into Karen's eyes, she looked radiant in the setting sun.

"You okay Erik?" She asked sitting down next to me and putting her arm around me.

"I guess." I said.

"Look, what happened to Anna wasn't your fault, you've done all you can now all we can do is pray."

"That's not all that's bothering me Kare," I said. "Do you think what Jake said is true? Am I really as bad as the Yerks?" Karen squeezed my shoulder a little and kissed me on the cheek.

"No babe, you and Jake just have different war-time strategies, you do what you think is necessary, I personally think you have the better strategy, and that's not just because you're my boyfriend, it's because the way you fight makes our job easier. War isn't an easy thing Erik, no one can escape war unscathed. When all I said and done I think you'll see that what you, what we've done is justified."

"I hope, I really hope, because I don't think…" She turned my head with her index finger then traced the scar on my cheek, I got the scar before I could morph, a Hork-Baijar slashed me right across the face Karen had saved my life it was that night the we had fallen in love. She put her finger to my lips.

"Shh, Shh." She put her hands on my shoulder and kissed me. Her lips were soft, I could smell her perfume (she must have borrowed some from Rachel). She kissed me on my neck. I kissed her on her forehead. Her hands moved from my shoulders…

"Kare," Said pulling away with some difficulty. "I don't think."

"Erik!" she seemed frustrated. "Look I know how much you value your faith, your virginity, I value mine too, but Erik, I love you, I have never loved a man like I love you, I just don't understand why you won't…"

"Lets get married then." I said. She started yelling.

"Erik, look around you, do you see any priests, any ministers, any rabbis, no I don't even see a fucking imam," Karen rarely cursed she seemed to realize she was yelling. "Sorry, I didn't mean to yell, but Erik, give this some thought OK. I should have said this earlier but when I saw that building explode I was afraid you were still in there.

"It was something you would do Erik," She sniffled a little. "fight until your death, sacrifice yourself to help another. I was so scared. I mean when you go on a mission without me I'm always scarred, Erik but this, it, it made me realize that we could die any day, and we have a higher risk than most, we need to live our lives, our love, to the fullest, think about it." She kissed me again and walked off. I heard a flutering of wings.

(Must be tough being you.) Tobias landed in front of me.

"Oh shit," I said. "How long have you been there?"  
(Four months,) He said. He morphed human form. Somehow his human form seemed to age along with his hawk morph. "You know me and Rachel thought about having sex. But then we decided against it, Ax says that morphing's affects on pregnancy haven't been determined and since there isn't a place to get the pill or a condom around here we just thought it wasn't worth the risk."

"Well I wouldn't have to worry about that, me and Karen are sterile."

"What?!"

"Our morphing somehow makes us sterile something to do with the continuous changes in species and the changes in genitalia that come with it, it just makes it so that it's impossible to conceive. It's mysterious because it doesn't cause menopause, or anything like that , maybe it drains the sperm and eggs of their DNA I don't know I'm studying to be a cardiologist, apples and oranges you know."

"Yeah, well… I'm sorry."

"Nothing to applogize for."

"Don't' worry bud." He slapped me on the back. "she'll come around. I can tell, you and her have something special. If there's one thing I've learned these past few years it's that relationships are intensified by danger, and I can tell you've been in more than your share of danger without the cushion of morphing." He pointed to my scar.

I thanked Tobias and walked off, the conversations I had made me feel better but still Jake's words stuck with me, they still haunt me to this day.


	21. Tape Transcript 19

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February 6th 2008

1:55 am

My night terrors woke me up again. I didn't go to see Karen though, I just went for a walk in order shake them off. It was dark and the moonlight was all that guided me. I walked along the river bank. Looking at the moon reflected by the water. I walked into someone.

"ummf" Rachel said.

"opps sorry." I said embarrassed.

"You're up late." She observed.

"Look who's talking, why are you up so late."

"Thinking, why are you up so late?"  
"Night Terrors, basicly I wake up in a cold sweat and with a racing heart and can't get back to sleep."

"You think the fight with Karen may have caused them."

"Good lord!" I said. "Is there any privacy here?"

"Nope," Rachel said I saw she was smiling in the moonlight. "Hork-Baijar are almost always up and climbing around, not to mention you picked Tobias' favorite sleeping tree to have your fight, but don't worry about it, I think deep down Karen knows your right, I mean there are maybe seven guys like you on earth, most girls would kill to have a guy with your views."

"Thanks."

"Um, Erik, can I ask you something about the experiment."

"Yeah, I don't have a sample yet but I will soon, I have all the materials I need to make it. But I think we should wait until after we win the war."

"Why?"

"Too risky, Tobias can't go and acquire animals easily and once the war is over you'll be able to be together with out Damocles' Sword hanging over you."

"What is it with you and blade analogies Damocles' sword, Glass Dagger, well I guess those are the only two." I had to laugh at that. The whole conversation had calmed me down.

"How did things go with Jake?" I asked.

"He's mad at me, said I wasn't to go on anymore missions, well I say shit on that, he can't tell me what to do, I lost my father to his caution, and if he continues this then the Animorphs will become one dimensional. We don't need that, we have to strike fast and hard, or we'll never win another battle, Erik we have another meeting tomorrow, I want you to bring up your idea, maybe Jake will take it up."

"I guess I will."  
"How's Anna?"

"I haven't seen her for awhile but when I left she was looking a little better. I hope she won't be out long. Morphing shock seems to only strike once, and you can never tell how long it will last. Anna's strong though, I know she'll pull through, she always does."

"I hope you're right." I said. Rachel yawned.

"Think I'll go to bed now."

"Me too," I said. "night Rachel."

"Night Erik"

I woke up early the next morning . I went straight to the tree where Anna was sleeping. James had beat me there, he was slumped over in his chair asleep still holding her hand. I almost broke down and cried but I was able to control myself. Hortana wasn't there, he must have been tending to other things at the moment. I cleared my throat. James' head snapped up.

"What, huh? Oh it's you Erik." He said.

"How is she."

"Well the doctor went to get some more of certain type of medicine, it's almost like a smelling salt for Hork-Baijar. He said that it almost brought her out of it. He's giving it to her using the IV." I noticed there was a dark red liquid in the IV bag. As if on cue the doctor returned.

"James," He said. "thought I told you to go and get some sleep." James looked at him.

"I'd rather be in the bed next to her doctor…

_"Crekenan_."

"Whatever, I can't leave her, I want to be the first thing she sees when she wakes up."

"I understand, Erik, is it, I heard that you are studying to be doctor for your species, so maybe you could give me a hand with changing this IV?" I got up to help him. We pulled the needle out of Anna's right arm and put a new bag with a new needle on the IV stand, but when I grabbed her wrist to put the needle in she pulled it away.

"There won't be a need for that older brother." James was kissing and hugging her in a heartbeat.

"Oh thank God," He paused every few words to kiss her on the lips and cheeks. "Thanks God, I thought, I thought you were, gone, don't, scare me like that." He finally, backed off and let me talk to her. I hugged her and then asked her how she was feeling.

"I feel like someone threw me in a dryer filled with bricks and put it in spin cycle." She said glumly. Then she sat up in bed and stood up on her own.

"Wait a minute…" Hortana said. "You need to lie down a little while longer I…"

"I've been lying down for what 12 hours now. I need to get moving again.."

"Anna you just woke up from a coma." I said.

"A twelve hour long coma, I feel fine." She walked out of the tree stumbling slightly.

"Good lord what a woman." Hortana said.

"You don't know the half of it." James said, and he followed her out. I followed soon after. Karen was waiting for me at the bottom. She was wearing an orange sweater and blue jeans. She was also wearing her green coat (Erek had picked it up for her). She walked up to me and took my hand.

"Erik," She said. "Sorry about last night, I didn't mean to get mad, I was kind of emotional, I was still recovering from seeing Anna in shock, and seeing that building blow up without knowing whether or not you had gotten out. I know how you feel about sex, and I respect that. I'm just afraid we won't get married before we die, I mean right now we're not entirely sure whether or not we'll even be able to get a license or anything, and something as public as a marriage it would attract a lot of attention.

"That means we may not be able to get married until the end of the war, and if one of us dies, Erik I don't want to die a virgin, not when I've found a love like I have with you, that's why I've been pressuring you so much. I'm afraid I'm running out of time." She bowed her head.

"Kare," I said. "I feel the same way sometimes, but I try to hold on to my faith, knowing that there is a higher power on your side it just makes this war easier, you've told me it does for you too, that's why I'm trying to hold on to most of the ideals of my faith, so I can hold on to a little bit of hope, the hope that it's God's will that we win, and Karen." I tilted her chin back up. "don't be afraid, your not going to die."

"Pardon me," Hortana had climbed down the tree. "I don't like to get into other peoples business but… I could marry you."

"What?" Both me and Karen said at the same time.

"I am actually an ordained catholic priest, I was being held prisoner with a cardnial and he ordained me, so I could become a missionary. If you want I'll marry you two, there is a Hork-Baijar wedding in three days, I could do it there. Would you like to take part in the Hork-Baijar ceremonies, if you do then the Hork-Baijar are honor bound to protect your union, and you will be afforded privacy by the colony, which as you know is a rarity here.

"You aren't kidding," I said. "Karen, you want to do this." She kissed me.

"Yes, yes I do." She was smiling, it was the best smile I had ever seen her give. "I can't wait to tell everyone!" She ran off laughing happily.

When I got back to the main part of the colony word had already spread. Sevral Hork-Baijar held their arms up and rubbed their blades together which I learned was a gesture of congratulations. When I reached my cave I found Jerry outside waiting.

"Hey good going man! Where you two registered? The Fatyville Gun and knife show?"

"Har, har, Jerry."

"Not there eh, what about Crab Shack Firearms and Explosives?"

"Um, no."

"Seriously what do you want for a wedding present?"

"Not much you can do, is there? You can't exactly walk into Wall-Mart."

"No, not exactly…" He said. "But I'll get Erek to pick it up come on man it's not a wedding if I don't get to empty someone else's bank account."

"Fine, I'd like some kind of momento, you know like a crystal plaque with our names and wedding date on it."

"Consider it done." Jerry said with a smile. "You old rascal you." He punched me in the arm. "You tell me all about the honeymoon night now."

"Um, no and I'm going to have four Hork-Baijar gaurds outside our cave for the duration so if you try and sneak in you'll likely loose an important body part." We both chuckled. I thought of something. I went to the other side of the valley. I saw Karen giggling with Rachel and looking at some of Rachel's clothes apparently trying to find a way to make a wedding dress. I pulled Karen aside and ran my idea past her. She loved it, I told her I would take care of everything.

I walked past a large hydroelectric genorater (more Chee technology) that supllied power to the colony. I went into a hut known as the lounge. There was a TV a PS2 and a computer, and a satillite phone.

I picked up the phone and dialed a number. After four rings I heard a familiar voice.

"Hi this is Jade, I'm not home right no, so leave a message and I'll get back up with you, oh and if this is Marco calling imitating that guy from _Scream_: no ones laughing, I know it's you give it up already… there was a beep.

"Hi Jade it's me Erik, I was calling to tell you something. I'm getting married to Karen in three days. I know it's kind of short notice. But I talked with Karen and well we'd like you to be the maid of honor. If you can't make it I understand but if you want to go I'll have Danny hang around by the warehouse, you know the one I mean I'm sure, tell him your answer and he'll take care of transportation. I've got some stuff to tell you anyway, long story short lets just say we'll be having an outdoor wedding. You know the drill don't try and trace the call. See you later bye." I hung up the phone.

When I walked out of the hut I was met by Erek.

"I have something to tell you," He said. "Do you know why your parents were killed?"  
"Yeah, I know that, they're research would have made the Yerk's job a lot harder…"  
"Well that is why, but they were also killed, because we failed you."  
"Huh?" I said.

"Erik Danny Estern is not in the CIA, he's one of us. He's been instructed to help you in any way he can to make for the fact that he couldn't save your parents."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I wasn't sure if you knew or not, I just thought you should." This revelation explained a lot. How Danny was able to gain so much information on the Yerk's activities, his opposition to my requests for guns and the fact that he didn't seem to have a regular job.

"Erek," I said. "If that's the case then can you get him to start meeting me here. And make sure he meets with Jade tonight at the regular meeting place."

"Done."

"Hey do you know how Jade is?"  
"She's doing fine, but your going to see her soon anyway aren't you?"  
"Were you listening in on my conversation?"

"Sorry, but congratulations on your marriage, a word of advice: put the toilet seat down." It was a pretty good attempt at humor and I laughed.

Jake begrudgingly cancelled his meeting because most everyone was still giddy about Karen, and me getting married. Over the days that passed. I was hoping that I would be able to relax a little and enjoy the last few days of my bachelorhood, but the day before my wedding all hell broke loose.


	22. Tape Transcript 20

__

February 7th 2008

9:22 am

Jake was content to cancel the meeting the day we announced our engagement. But he wasn't going to lose two days to it. I can't say I blame him though.

"So what's on the agenda today Jake?" Marco said. As I sat down I noticed that Rachel, and Tobias were conspicuously absent from the meeting. Once everyone had been seated Jake stood up.

"OK, I've just got some bad news from Erek, it seems that the Yerks now have deicded to search for us, we have Rachel to thank for this, well they're planning to use a stattilte system to scan the entire country, they will take aerial photos, now this may take a few months but I'd prefer they don't get a chance. To find us.

"One of the satellite receptors is located in Wilmington, hidden in the Cape Fear Museum, we need to get there and take it out. Now Wilmington is on the coast, that's a seven hour drive from here. So we're going to have to leave soon. Once we get there Jerry will need to hack into the computer at the receptionist's desk to figure out how to get in there once in we're going to run into security, and lots of it, so I want everyone to go into the museum in battle morph. Once we fight in far enough we'll get to the signal room.

"When we get there Jerry will install a virus onto the network to knock out the satellites, and we'll comence to trashing the place. And Erik, no human casualties remember that."

"Where's Rachel and Tobias?" I asked.

"That's a good question, Erik," Jake said condescendingly. "Rachel and Tobias are not here because Rachel is a rouge wolf and Tobias is whipped, if either one of them knew about this mission we'd have a big problem, because Rachel would end up showing up and we need stable people on this mission we can't afford anymore screw-ups like last time. So everyone get up we're going now."

"WHAT!" Me, Karen, Cassie, Jerry, Amy, Anna, Fred, and James all said at once.

"We need to leave while Rachel and Tobias are out on their 'date'. Ax if when come back then tell them we went off for Erik and Karen's Bachelor parties."

(Yes prince Jake, but if I may ask what is a bachelor party?) Ax asked.

"Long story Ax, don't have time lets go." Jake said. We left, I knew it wouldn't be good to argue, I had the feeling I'd be needed on this mission.

__

10:30 am

(OK) I said in private thought speak to Amy. We were in our buzzard morphs flying towards the city where we would take the bus to Wilmington. (Danny has a dead drop set up near the museum, you need to go pick up your sniper rifel and take a post out side the museum. Try not to kill any cops but do what you need to, I don't want anyone following us down there so if anyone tries to enter fire a warning shot then your are to terminate. Understand.)

(Yes.) Amy said. Amy had always taken her job seriously. She rarely morphed, in fact I think she has only one or two good battle morphs. Her main job has been as a sniper and she has been very useful to my team. But Amy wasn't made for war, it used to be her boyfriend's infestation that kept her fighting, but her boyfriend became Visser 8, and she had to kill him. Now she was fueled by revenge on the Yerks.

After that she had taken the stress of the war hard, but she still did her job. We arrived at the bus station an hour early. I sat down and held hands with Karen, who insisted on fighting alongside me on this mission, she told me that she didn't like being on the outside when I was risking my life.

I watched the other passengers file in and I took an extra look at one, tall, black hair, pale, I doubted he was who I thought he was. Since Jade had said that she wouldn't be able to make it to the wedding, it was unlikely that anyone associated with her team, (that I called Golden Fist) would be hanging around, but still…

"Are you checking out other girls already?" Karen said teasingly.

"No it's a boy." I said.

"Good lord I didn't know that about you !" Karen said, but she was smiling , smiling that wonderful smile. I kissed her, and for a moment there was nothing but me and her.

"Bus 132 non-stop to Wilmington is now boarding."

"That's our cue." Jake said and we walked onto the bus." I noticed the brown haired kid follow us on.

__

7:45 pm

The trip over was a ordeal. I sat next to an elderly lady. At first I enjoyed her stories, but then she started vividly describing the birth of her children. After I heard that I was happy that I was sterile there was no way I could put Karen thorough that, I couldn't even stand to see her prick her finger. I finally pretended to be asleep and she started talking to Marco.

The trip took a long time and it took even longer because we got stuck in a traffic jam. When we got to the museum it was long since closed. Meaning we'd have to break in. Karen decided to do the honors. She got wide really wide. Black hair began to break out on her face. Her lips burst out and large antlers grew from her head. He legs turned inward and grew to so did her arms. I saw her closing her eyes tightly trying to slow the pain. Her hands and feet became hoofs, and her tail grew.

Karen was the only person I knew that could morph an animal of the opposite sex without screaming soon she was a full grown male Canadian Moose.

"Hey where are Boris and Natasha?" Marco asked.

"What?" Jerry said.

"_Rocky and Bullwienkille _come on man, are there any classics left?" Marco said. Karen stood back and got ready to charge.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," A voice said. "That windows alarmed you set it off and every Yerk in the city will be here in ten minutes." I turned around, the boy who had followed us here was standing there.

"Hey Robert." I said.

"Hey, Erik." Robert responded.


	23. Tape Transcript 21

I wrote this chapter with a little bit of writers block so it may not be as good as my other ones

"Robert," I said. "What are you doing here?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm following you."

"I mean why are you here, in Wilmington, why were you in Maggie Valley, why are you following us?"

"I'd like to know that too Robert." Jake said.

"I'm following you because I was instructed to."

"By who?" Jake asked. When he did I heard a hoot. An owl landed beside him and began to change form. First a head appeared the head then grew chestnut brown hair that lengthened till it was almost on the floor.

The owl then grew, as she grew it grew shoulders which put the hair length in perspective, it was really only shoulder length. Soon I was staring at Jade. The entire group seemed surprised and glad to see her. Marco moved over to hug her but Jake grabbed his arm.

"We can have a welcome party later. Lets just get inside, now you said there's an alarm, how do we bypass it?"

"Well this secutiry system is based on breaking in, if we can pick the lock then there's no problem." Robert said . He then took a credit card out of his pocket and began to pick at the lock. After a few minutes of his cursing he got in. When the door opened Karen found out she was too big to enter. She had to morph and go in as a human.

We each went into our various battle morphs. Marco into Gorrila, Jake into tiger, Cassie into wolf, Fred into spitting cobra, Becky into salt water crocidile, I morhed into cougar.

Anna must have decided to go with a different morph than her usual salt water crcoidle She first turned dark gray. Then her teeth retracted into her mouth. After which She grew to about twelve feet long . He legs turned in and she fell forward onto new hoofs. Her eyes moved to the top of her head and I saw the pain in them. Her face exploded outward making a large mouth in which grew two tusks. She grew a tail and was soon a full grown female river hippo.

(Nice where'd you get that morph?) I asked her.

(A zoo. Duh.) She said. James then decided to morph. Two horns grew out of his head. Hair began to on his body. He fell forward onto hoofs. The base of his horns grew to cover his head. He was soon a cape buffalo. Robert became a polar bear, and jade went into a Siberan tiger morph.

(OK so now what?) Robert asked. Jake quickly filled him in on the plan. We then entered the museuem. Jerry walked over to the receptionists desk turned on the comuter and began typing. It was a funny sight a man typing away at a computer while surrounded by deadly animals. While he was typing Karen went into the ladies room and emerged as a moose, unfortunately she took half the door way with her.

(Hope they have insurance) She said. Jerry stopped typing.

"Okay found it, the enterance is hidden in an exhibit on some guy from this state who signed the some important document, all you have to do is press in on the copy of the document and a trap door opens, so lets go." He morphed kommdo dragoon. We walked thourgh the various exhibits, like the cast of _The Lion King _on a field trip. When we reached the exhibit we wanted to Marco pressed the document.

Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Still nothing.

(It's a trap isn't it?) Anna said.

(No,) Jade said. (It's just that the trap door opens slowly as a matter of fact…) She was cut off. We all fell. The next thing I knew I was in a brightly lit hall. We were met by gunfire. Thanks to the speed and rough skin of the hippo the four human controllers that were firing found there insides coating the ground.

(What the fuck! Bishop I said no human casualties.) Jake yelled.

(Bite me Jake!) Anna said. (It was them or us now lets go.) The hallway opened into the computer room it was large and already filled with controllers. We all broke apart and began attacking. I came to a Taxxon first. I literally jumped through him. Spilling his guts, several other Taxxons ran over to feast on their new victim. The room had become engulfed in a cacophony of gunshots and screams. I saw that people continued to file in faster than they could be impaled, disembowled blinded… you get the point.

(Hey Jake!) I yelled. While fighting a group of Taxxons (Are we planning to take out this entire base or what?)

(Don't worry, Marco is going to to take care of it when he gets free.) Marco was fighting two Hork-Baijar and a Taxxon. I saw James with two Hork-Baijar impaled on each horn. Anna was slashing at a human with her tusks. Jerry was dragging the intestines of a Hork-Baijar around the room, Karen was trapling a few Taxxons, Becky had a human head in her jaws, and the scene of chaos just got worse.

(Oh what's Marco going to do anyway?) I asked as I fought with another Hork-Baijar.

(He's going to close the blast doors, it'll give us enough time to do our job, oh and get Karen to destory that sattilite.)

(Jake I am this close to ramming you into the wall, don't give me orders got it? Karen you heard the asshole get that sattilite receptor out!)

Karen ran through four Hork-Baijar, six Taxxons, and two humans into the large stailite recptor. It fell over and broke apart. The blast doors that were made to protect the computer room from Dracon beam fire all began to close. A voice came over the intercom.

"Warning! Warning! The recptor is under attack. Blast doors to close in 10 seconds, inating fumigation procedures."

(Fumigation… oh shit. Get out NOW, EVERYONE, abort mission NOW!) I yelled. I noticed that all of the people we were fighting were running for the exits. Most made it but about ten didn't and four were cut in half by the closing doors. The ones who didn't make were set upon by my teammates.

"Warning! Warning! All security cameras are now disabled, fumigation to begin in one minute." The computer in the center of the room flashed a large timer with 1:00 counting down.

(Jerry demorph and see if you can get into the computer and shut off this thing, I have a feeling we don't want to be here when…)

"Countdown overridden, beginning fumigation process." Large vents opened up and green gas began to enter. Jerry had demoprhed and was hacking quickly, I only hoped he could find a way to reverse the process.

(Hold you breath everyone!) Jake said. Anna had an advatage in this area, Hippos coud hold their breaths a long time but the rest of us were, in a word "fucked". The gas must have been designed to move slow, in case someone got stuck in here, I looked around for someone to get it from but the only remaining members of our enemies' team were all dead.

"Come on Come on…" Jerry was saying. The gas was getting closer I got ready to inhale and hold my breath. "FUCK! Oh FUCK! There's no override here, guys we're trapped it's over, I can't believe it's going to end like this…" No override meant that the gas would kill us. There was no hope. Amy was at a sniper post, Jake had left three more of our potential rescuers clear across the state. I knew I should have kept someone outside in case this happened, but…

(Sorry guys this is all my fault.) I said. There was no way we were escaping, this was how it was going to end. (Sorry Kare,) I found out then that cougars could cry. (I broke my promise, demorph please, I want to die holding you hand…) We both demorphed, everyone followed our lead. Even Anna.

"I don't want to be the only one left it's lonely ." I didn't argue, the gas would likely have lasted past her hippos breath ability. I walked over to Karen and took her in my arms. I saw Jake and Cassie holding each other as well Jake was running his fingers through her hair holding her in a kiss, it was the first time I could look at him without thinking of Neville Chamberlain.

Jade and Marco were in a similar postion. Anna and James were almost having sex right there. Becky was kind crying and Jerry went over to comfort her. Robert was trying to pry open the doors with his hands, I heard him murmering swear words under is breath, I saw into his eyes, they were filled with an anger, an anger that I felt, how could it end like this _gas _why couldn't it be in a blast of glory. Well I knew it was up Rachel Tobais and Ax now, they would win they had to.

I kissed Karen, I knew it would be the last time I tasted her lips here on earth. I saw the gas was just over our heads. Still holding Karen I knelled down, I wanted to make the most of my last seconds with her.

I ran my fingers down her nose to her neck. She put her hand on mine, I put my other hand on hers stoking it. I whispered in her ear.

"I love you more than anything Kare I want you to know that, I'm sorry I ruined everything." Everyone was kneeling now the gas was almost on us. Karen looked into my eyes and I looked into hers. In that moment I knew that the love we had would survive death, I saw in her eyes my world, everything in life that I wanted that I needed it was there in green and blue. My life, my soul, my everything. The gas was right over us, we only had a few seconds.

"I love you." I said, it was three simple words, but everything I had was in them.

"I love you too." We held each other resting our heads on each others shoulders closed our eyes and waited for death to come.

Note: I'd like to see what you thought of the emotions I put in this chapter were they as powerful as I wanted them to be? I'm sorry for the rushed quality of it, I'm not very proud of the start.


	24. Tape Transcript 22

****

Lilmaniac- Thanks for the advice on writers block, that does help me sometimes and do love Evenessane. I'll try to have my chapters in soon, maybe before the week is out, no promises though.

11:28 pm

I heard a hiss, I guessed that was the gas entering my lungs. I gripped Karen tightly, I kissed her. I felt a rush of cold air, that, I guessed was my soul leaving my body, but I still felt Karen's body, and her heart was still beating. I opened my eyes.

There was no green gas, all of the doors had opened, the cameras were still off.

    "Get back in morph! Before the cameras come back on." I recognized that voice. Ian! I looked up from Karen's shoulder. Ian had jumped from an opening in a ventilation shaft . Amy was standing next to him. We had been saved.

    "Not yet." Jerry said. I have a job to do.' He walked over to the computer, the large screen changed it showed an image of orbiting satellites. Jerry put a disk in the computer's disk drive. The image of the satellites showed each one seem to turn off. "There that'll knock out the satellites for three months. And the damage we did here will take time to clean up I think we can chalk this up as a…"

    "What the fuck just happened?" I head a voice from beyond the doors, another answered him.

    "Someone shut off the gas from upstairs, Sub-Visser 2."

    "Shit! Fucking Andalites, where's the video feed?"

    "Camera's shut off when gas flow starts, it's less messy that way."

    "Get them back up now so I can see if the gas did it's job."

    (Get in morph guys!) Ian yelled. We each resumed our battle morphs and made it just in time to avoid the camera's going on. Amy had gone into the one battle morph she had: an anaconda. Now this wasn't some monster like snake like you saw in that low budget movie. She didn't do any hissing or growling and she was only about 14 feet long. Still she was a formidable sight.

    "Damn, there's more of them now. Open up the doors! Do it now!"

    (When the doors open,) Ian said. (Follow me.) The doors opened. There were four sets one on each side of the rectangular room . Ian ran through the ones on the left side. It wasn't the ones we had come in on but this wasn't the time to argue. We followed. We didn't run into much resistance, at least that's what I thought until I looked back. No less than twenty Hork-Baijar were running after us with Dracon beams raised.

    (Why are we running, why don't we fight these SOBs) Robert said.

    (Dear God Robert do you have a death wish even _I _don't want to fight right now.) I yelled. Robert was brave I'd give him that any day but he was also incredibly stupid. I may take a lot of risks but I won't go charging into certain death without a reason.

    Tessewww, Tessewww. Two dracon beams missed me by an inch.

    "What the fuck are you doing you dumb meat cutter, don't fire here, if you hit a computer Visser one is going to have my ass." I assumed that was the voice of the Sub-Visser. We continued to run, the morphs we chose were fast, unfortunately the Hork-Baijar were fast too and hippos and cheetahs couldn't run for very long. Ian and Anna were overtaken by the Hork-Baijar who commenced to slicing and dicing.

    (Ok you get your wish Robert we get to fight.) I said turning around.  I was the first into the battle pouncing on a another unlucky Hork-Baijar and slashing it's face into pieces. Two tried to get in and slash me but, one found itself on a Cape Buffalo horn and the other was missing a head, since it had been bitten off by a tigress.

    (That's 6 you owe me.) Jade said.

    (Five.) I said, jumping over her and killing a Taxxon that had somehow gotten behind her. Karen joined the battle, at least 6 Hork-Baijar were stick between her large antlers . She shook her head violently and got them off easily, relieving them of a few limbs in the process.

    Amy had two Hork-Baijar in her grasp and was knocking a third one aside with her large head. Becky was sticking close to her to make sure that she wasn't hurt since her battle morph was somewhat slower at bringing death than the rest of us.

The number of Hork-Baijar had dwindled drastically, but we had a long way to go. Jade had gotten herself backed into corner with four Hork-Baijar slashing at her. She disemboweled one but the other got her across the face blinding her. Marco was over in a heart beat, literally ripping the offending Hork-Baijar to shreds.

    Jade shape shifted into lioness nullifying the blindness. Karen was tramping over a group of Taxxons, Jake was fighting a Hork-Baijar with Cassie. I looked past the other Hork-Baijar to see Sub-Visser 2. He looked familiar.

(Oh my God, that's Chapman). Marco said. (Even now he's trying to give me detention!) Amy was just staring at Chapman with an expression I couldn't read.

(Chapman, how did he get so high on the Yerk hierarchy?) Jake asked. (Bishop what the fuck you doing.) A tiger jumped between me and Chapman.

(No, Human, Casualties!) He said.

(Look Jake, I can go around you, or I can go _through _you. That's your choice.) While I was arguing most the other Hork-Baijar had been finished off there was nothing between me and Chapman, between me and a blow to the Yerk's morale.

    I moved to pounce, Jake jumped too and caught me with a paw in mid air. I flew into the side wall- _pain_. I was stunned and lay there for awhile.

    (Erik!) Karen yelled. I found myself being nuzzled by a moose. (Are you OK)

    (I'm fine Kare, bastard just caught me off guard.) I struggled painfully to my feet. Everyone was staring at Jake.

    (What the hell are you doing Jake?) Marco said. (Have you lost your mind?) I honestly didn't know Tigers could look shocked at what they had done but Jake was doing a good job of it.

    (I- I don't) BANG (Arrrg) Chapman had shot Jake, but his aim was off, it seemed just to graze his side.

    (That's it, he's going down!) Karen yelled.

    (NO human casualties) Jake yelled but he knew he couldn't fight Karen without killing her, and he knew if he did 1: he'd have a human causality, 2 I'd cut off every part of his body with a rusty steak knife and make him eat each part raw. Karen easily took the bullets Chapman shot at her. She connected with her anthers. She didn't cut him but sent him flying thirty feet. He hit the floor and skid another five.

    He didn't get up. Karen charged at him to finish the job.

    (Wait,!) Jake yelled. (He's not a threat anymore,) Karen stopped but not because Jake said to. (Amy let him GO!) Amy had slithered over and wrapped Chapman in her coils. (let him go.) Amy's voice didn't sound like her own.

    (NO! He's the bastard that infested Joel.) I knew then that Chapman would die. Joel was Anna's late boyfriend. He was useful to the Yerks because he was an astrophysics major, and he knew a lot about Earths Solar system. Amy had watched as he was being infested through a sniper scope. When she heard him called "Visser" she had shot him. Ever since then she had never been the same. I now knew what the expression Anna had looked at Chapman with was: hate, pure hate.

    Chapman's ribs had been shattered, it woke him up,

    "Ah hel…" The air was squeezed out of his lungs so he couldn't finish the sentence. Chapman was about to die despite Jake screams for Amy to release him. Amy's snake head exploded, I saw the human controller standing there with a smoking gun, I heard the approach of foot steps.

    (We need to go…) Ian said, but I could tell he was shocked at what had happened. We ran, I barely realized I was running. I just followed. Soon we reach an open man hole. We each jumped down it and ran a ways through the sewer before demorphing to recharge the time-limit.

    "Amy…" Becky said, she had tears in her eyes. "It just it can't…" She started crying, Jerry put his arm around her, but he looked like he was about to cry too. She glared at Jake.

    "It's your fucking fault! If you had let Erik kill him then Amy wouldn't have attacked. Where did you get your bullshit war philosophy anyway, from the French? No offense Jade." (That's Becky never offend someone unless you have to).

    "I, I'm sorry." Jake said

    "Beck," I said. "As much as I'd like to blame Jake for this it wasn't his fault. It was just bad luck."

    "Bad luck?" Becky sobbed. "One of your best friends dies and you say it's bad luck?"

    "Believe me it hurts Becky it really does," I said. "but crying isn't going to bring her back." Becky broke down entirely bawling silently onto Jerry's shoulder.

    "Ian," I said. "Where are we going?"

    "I have my ship parked nearby I'll drop you off at the valley. With the cloaking device on I'll be able to fly you there without anyone seeing, it'll take about 4 hours."

    "Lets go." I said we walked through the sewer Becky crying, Jade looking shocked, Robert seeming jaded. Jake looking mournful, with Cassie comforting him. (This was the second time I almost felt sorry for Mr. Chamberlain.) Karen didn't show much emotion, but I knew she was just holding it in. Jerry was trying to stay strong for Becky's sake. Anna was only silently crying and being comforted by James. Myself? I just tried to forget, it was hard I felt awful because she was my responsibility and I failed her, but if I got too emotional I might not want to keep fighting, and that would be an insult to Amy's memory.

In the air over the Cape Fear River

New Hanover County, NC

February 8th 2008 12:22 am.

    I was sitting in one of the few sleeping quarters aboard Ian's ship. Trying to clear my head. It had happened so fast. One minute Amy was alive and fighting. The next she was dead. I had never fully grasped that fear that, danger. This brought it crashing down. I was sitting on the bed. With my hand on my head.

    I was still mad at Jake. Not for Amy but for hitting me. I knew that leadership was difficult but the stress of leadership did not excuse an attack on an ally. You could discipline your team, you had a right, hell a responsibility to but you never attack an ally. Much less an ally team's leader. I knew now that I couldn't trust Jake. I would continue to work with him but… only to complete my goal.

    I heard a beep, that meant someone was at my door.

    "Open" I said. Jade was standing in the doorway.

    "Can I come in?" She asked.

    "Sure." She came over and sat next to me.

    "Erik I, I'm sorry about Amy… it must feel bad to lose a teammate. I can only imagine what kind of pain your going through."

    "You concern is touching but unnecessary, anyway Jade, you've experienced a worse loss than me, I know what I feel pales in comparison." Jade changed the subject, what had happened to her a few years ago must still hurt.

    "So how are you going to have the wedding?"

    "A Hork-Baijar priest is going to marry us believe it or not. We plan to get married on the overlook."

    "Here," She reached into her pocket. "I brought you a wedding present, since I knew you wouldn't have time to get a ring…" She brought out a diamond ring it had smaller diamonds carved into the band, and a wedding band carved from marble.

    "Oh no Jade, I can't take those, those are from your family…"

    "They were given to me to give to who I wanted to. My parents told me that, although they'd like me to use them myself they said I could give it to a friend for their wedding gift. You know that no one in my family who wore the rings ever broke apart. They say that these rings will give each spouse a piece of the other forever. I know that's the kind of love you have for Karen.

    "I saw the way you looked into her eye's when the gas was falling, that kind of love is rare Erik, very rare. " I didn't realize I was crying until I felt the tears.

"You OK" she asked. I wiped my tears away embarrassed.

    "Yeah, fine, I'm fine."

    "Good luck, tomorrow, Karen said you wrote your own vows."

    "Yeah we did." I had spent four hours pouring over a piece of paper, it was almost impossible to explain in words how I felt about Karen

    "Are you still having the wedding?"

    "I'm going to ask Karen that right now, pardon me." I walked out of my room and to the room where Karen was staying. I pressed a silver button that would alert Karen I was out there.

    "Who's there?" Karen's voice said.

    "It's me Erik." I said.

    "Open." she said. The door slid open. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. Although she had tried to hide it I knew she had been crying. I could tell by her tone of voice when she answered me, not by her face. (Karen never needed makeup.)

    "Kare," I sat next to her and put my arm around her. "You okay babe?"

    "Yeah, fine." She said. "Hey your not supposed to see the bride before the wedding."

    "You still want to get married?"

    "Yeah Ere, I, I think Amy would have wanted it this way, she wouldn't have wanted to impose on us…" She buried her face in my shoulder. I ran my hands through her hair. Her hair was still as soft as ever despite the fact that she had been through so much. "I just can't believe she's gone, we couldn't even get her body, she, she didn't even get to die in her own body."

    "I know, I know, it's okay." I kissed her on the back of her head and rubbed her back. Karen was rarely so vulnerable, even around me. Karen was one of the strongest women I had ever known, seeing her like this was hard. I held her and let her cry. Finally she seemed to be done she looked up and kissed me.

    "Sorry," She said. "It's just… I've been around death since I was 18, but this is the first time it ever hit me so close. I mean all those that we've had to kill they were just ghosts, nothing, like stick figures on a piece of paper. Then when someone close dies, even though I've killed so many people, I can't stand it… it's so… selfish of me…" I knew what was bothering her, it bothered me too. I pulled her even closer.

    "Karen, that's just something you have to get used to. I mean if we think of the enemy as having a soul then our job would become difficult if not impossible. And if we didn't think of each other as _having _a soul then we'd fall apart, you know that I try my damndest not to get too close to the others, but I already have, losing one of my teammates, losing one of my friends, hurts. If we don't care for each other then what are we fighting for? If we get too close to the enemy how will we fight? Don't feel bad about yourself Karen, you are one of the nicest kindest women I've had the fortune to know.

    "Your only flaw appears to be remarkably bad taste in men." Karen smiled weakly. I let her go she looked at me, I looked back at her. We shared one of the most passionate kisses we had ever shared then. When we broke apart I got up.

    "Get some rest. We'll be home in about three hours, enjoy the bed while you can, because we'll be back to sleeping on hard rock ground pretty soon." I walked out of her room and back into mine. I lay down on my bed, I had forgotten how soft a bed was. I was asleep in minutes.


	25. Tape Transcript 23

A word of warning: The next two chapters are EXTREAMLY sappy and mushy, I am really focusing on Erik and Karen's Marriage for this part, don't worry though I'll have stuff blow up again soon. I am going to wrap the book up soon. Last but not least in the chapter after this one I am going to put sexuality so anyone who is made uncomfortable by that is forewarned, I plan to water it down a lot but still it's not something that would pass the MPAA with less than a R rating, enjoy, and tell me if these next two aren't up to snuff.

Even though Ian wanted to stay for the wedding he was afraid to stay in one place too long. His cloaking device had been on the blink lately and he was afraid he'd compromise our locations if he stayed. Meaning that when we got to the valley it was back to the cave floors. While it wasn't as comfortable to sleep on a cave floor I was still tired. So it wasn't long before I was asleep again.

4:33 am   
A Hork-Baijar woke me up a few hours later.

"_Cangorg_, wake up, you must prepare for ceremony." my voice was thick with sleep.

"What's a _Cangorg_?" I asked.

"How you humans say? Goom?" I woke up a little more.

"You mean groom? What time is it? Am I late?"

"No not for wedding, but you may be late for pre-wedding."

"What's that?" I said getting dressed now and walking out the door. It was still dark out.

"Pre-wedding when Hork-Baijar prepare body for woman. You fortunate, Hork-Baijar _Crekena _has proper sacraments. Come with me." I followed him, still half sleepwalking, through the valley. We came out at one of the outcroppings on the river. It was secluded by a large slab of rock. It was sometimes used as a shower room because of it's privacy. Standing there was Hortana, and another Hork-Baijar. Hortana walked over to me. He whispered in my ear.

"Whatever Nekton," He gestured toward the other Hork-Baijar. "Says you say _Curkono Nebar Umobo _that means may it be for you as well, he knows a lot of English but he may mix in some of his own tongue and he can't understand accented English very well either so just say what I told you to say.

"The first part will be a bath in a scented oil from a tree on the home world, it's going to tingle but it is actually a pretty good feeling, plus it might help that pimple that just appeared on your forehead." I felt my forehead, yup, a pimple, the old oily express right on schedule. "Stand next to Nektana." He said. I obeyed.

Nektana shook my hand. (Quite a weird experience since most of the time when I'm so close to a Hork-Baijar arm I'm normally in mortal danger. In front of me was a large wooden bowl. By large I mean at least 50 feet in diameter it was filled with a dark blue thick looking liquid.

"Ah good day Bisop, may the bond of you and your wife last longer than the bond of a tree to it's bark."

"_Curkono Nebar Umobo_." I said, stumbling on the symbols. I was instructed to strip and enter the liquid, after a thorough bath in the chemical (it was like bathing in Jell-O) I did feel somewhat clean. After that I was taken to a small cave behind a waterfall. I was told to wait there.

After a few minutes Fred came to where I was too, he looked tired.

"Damn Hork-Baijar can't they read a watch?" Fred was my best man and I assumed that he was going to be subject to the same things I was. I was right he had to undergo the same bath and then was returned to the cavern. We waited for a few hours and then Toby came to the cave.

"It's time." He said. We both followed him. When we reached the main colony we noticed that most of the population was watching the end of the Hork-Baijar wedding. I noticed that at the end each cut off one of their blades and placed it on the other one.   
"OK," I said. "I'm not doing that."

"Oh don't worry," Toby said. "The only thing you'll have to do different from your normal wedding ceremony is drink from the _Formar _cup." We reached the path that led to the overlook where I stopped people were cheering. I saw that most of the Animorphs were present only Jake was absent. "Start walking and stop at the alter, like normal Karen will on in afew minutes." Toby said.

"Hey wait what's a _Formar _cup?" Toby didn't hear me. I decided it wasn't important and began to walk up the path. When I reached the alter at the top I saw Hortana holding a Bible and smiling. Then I saw Karen at the start of the path. Her hair was running it's full shoulder length, a long veil coverd her face. Her dress was a brilliant white that extended along the floor. She had a huge smile on. Behind her Jade was in a green one piece dress. Rachel, Cassie and Rachel's oldest sister Jordan were bridesmaids. Sarah Rachel's younger sister was the flower girl.

She walked up the path, I looked out at my friends. Anna was smiling while holding James' hand. James was watching regularly showing no strong emotion but Anna had enough emotion for both of them. Becky was openly crying.

Robert was standing off on his own but he had a smile on his face too, in fact I was certain I saw a tear in the corner of his eye. Karen reached the alter. Hortana went through the normal "dearly beloved" part of the wedding. Soon it got to our vows. Jade doubled as the ring bearer and handed us the rings Karen decided to go first.

"Erik," She said. "I have seen a lot in the last few years. I have seen many gruesome deaths, I have been attacked by men who have no control over their bodies. I've been shot, stabbed, choked, and cut. But through all this Erik I've always had you to lean on. You've always been there for me. I have always been there for you. We truly need each other to continue. Looking into your eyes will always remind me why I'm fighting. With this ring I vow that I will always be there for you. I will always love you, and will never abandon you. That I will stand by your side until death parts us." She placed the ring on my finger. I read my vows.

"Karen, since the day we first kissed I have never wanted to be with anyone but you. You have been the light in a world that is all to dark for me. Your smile lights my life and warms my heart. Your face calms my fears and doubts. Your eyes contain my world, my life, my soul, you have completed me, you have shown me what true love is. With this ring I vow that I will protect you, that I will stand by you, that I will love you until the day I die." I placed the ring on her finger. If possible her hands were even softer than usual.

We both said our I do's, no one objected to our union. Then Toby came in with a wooden cup with two handles. It was filled with a bright green liquid.

"This is the _Fomar _cup," Hortana said. "Let they who drink from it be bonded for eternity. We each took one of the handles and taking our cue from Toby drank from it at the same time. Our faces touched while we tasted the drink. It had a taste like apple wine. "I now pronounce you man and wife, and whom God hath joined together may no man put asunder, you may kiss the bride." I leaned in and kissed her. I felt her tongue slide into my mouth briefly. We walked back down the path. As we did the Hork-Baijar began to chant and dance and sing.

Our reception was held in a village center on the Hork-Baijar side of the colony. There was a band of Hork-Baijar who had instruments fashioned of bark and logs. It was strangely peaceful. There was a large bon fire that had a turkey breast cooking over it. I turned to Karen.

"Sorry we couldn't have a cake but…" She smiled.

"That's fine, I'd be happy if we got married in a compost factory."

"Funny, that's where our honeymoon is." Karen laughed. Having to hold to Hork-Baijar tradition Karen and I had our first dance as husband and wife at the beginning of the reception. Dancing with there with Karen, the world slowed down. All that I noticed was her. The party continued for hours. I acme tired very early from all the dancing. I noticed Becky and Robert dancing I wondered if they might be rekindling their love that was born in the Crow's Nest in Gloucester Massachusetts.

The turkey was cooked in a few hours. The new Hork-Baijar couple along with Karen and me shared the turkey like we would a wedding cake. We only stayed a while longer then we had to leave. Karen and I walked into a secluded part of the valley and held a small memorial service for Amy, I had a nagging feeling that it wouldn't be the last…


	26. Tape Transcript 24

By the time we finished the memorial service it was late, as I walked with Karen to her cave where we would be staying. Before we arrived Jerry stopped us.

"Hey I got your gift." He said.

"Jerry you didn't have to." Karen said.

"Yeah but I wanted to," He said and took out a package wrapped in bubble wrap and crepe paper. "I thought you might like it." Karen opened it. Inside was foot high and foot wide crystal dagger. Engraved in it were the words Karen Lanley and Erik Bishop, Married on this day February 8th 2008. It was set so that the dagger could be stood up anywhere. Karen smiled.

"thank you Jerry." She gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"Well," Jerry said. "Thought you could use something nice on your wedding day, cause your not getting anything from this loser." he laughed at his own bad joke. "Sorry that was bad, well good luck you two. I know that you're a good couple, I…"

"You saw Becky and Robert dancing didn't you?" Karen asked.

"Yeah, I," he looked near tears. "I care for her a lot you know, and I worry that Robert will break her heart again. I know that you two think she wasn't hurt by it but she was, she gave him part of her and… I don't know all the details about what happened but something hurt her… I don't know if it was him or her but, I've never seen so hurt as when he broke up with her, I mean I know he didn't do it to be hateful but… I just don't want to see her hurt again." Karen patted him on the back.

"Jerry you have to tell her, if you don't let her know how you feel then you'll always regret it, you need to make your move Jerry."

"I think I'll go do that now," He turned to leave.

"You two have fun now, and put that thing somewhere where you won't break it in you 'festivities'."" He walked off laughing. We walked on and were at Karen's cave just before sunset. There was already a fire going. Karen closed the door, leaving the smoke vent open. She looked in the room and gasped. In the middle was a large double bed. It seemed to be carved out of the local trees, there was a note on it. Karen took it off and we read it together.

__

Karen and Erik

Congratulations, here is the gift from the colony to you. It is a bed stuffed with the leaves of an Ofo_ tree these leaves are leaves that will never rot. It is the last of my artifacts from my home world. The head board was made by one of my patients who happened to be w wood carver, as you can see he can make in a few days what it would take humans a few months to make. I hope your marriage is everlasting and joyous,_

Sincerely yours

Hortnana

I looked at the headboard. Carved into it was a Dragon and a Phoenix the details were incredible. Karen stared in awe.

"Wow," She said. "This will make sleeping a little easier huh?"

"Yeah," I said. "It will." Karen stepped closer t me and looked me in the eyes. We stared at each other like that for a few minutes then kissed. We held the kiss for a long time then Karen ran her hand down the side of my face and kissed my neck.

I in turn kissed hers. She stepped back and slid off the straps of her dress letting it fall to the floor. I stood and looked at her body. In the firelight she seemed to glimmer, she looked like a goddess. I felt unworthy to touch her. I saw her appendectomy scar. She had her appendix out when she was 12, most scars are left over from an extraordinary part of someone's life, her scar was left over from a normal part.

Gazing at the rest of her body I saw that she was perfect. From her head to her chest to her toes, there were no flaws, everything added to her beauty.I slipped out of my own clothes and kissed her. We backed up and fell onto the bed. It was incredibly soft. We began to make love, in my Catholic upbringing I had been told of the "one flesh" marriage, I had always assumed it was a nicer way of describing the physics of sex.

But when I was with Karen there, that night, I couldn't tell where I ended and she began. We were truly like one, time stood still to me, for the second time that day I could only see her. But now I could smell her and feel her as well, the experience was incredible, being so intimate so close to her.

I heard her heavy breathing match mine and I knew she felt the same way I did.

"Erik." She whispered softly into my ear.

"Karen." I responded. And kissed her stomach. How long we lasted is a blur, but when we were done I knew that we had both equally enjoyed the experience. After we had cleaned up we changed into the night clothes that Rachel had bought us for our wedding. They were very comfortable and "at the top of the fashion list" whatever that meant. We both laid down in the same bed letting it's softness put us both to sleep.

I woke up a few hours later with the common feeling of dread in my stomach. The fire had died down but I could still see Karen's face. It calmed my nerves, but I needed to touch her. She was breathing gently so I wrapped my arm around her gently and kissed her forehead. I kept my arm around her as I went to sleep. My night terrors haven't bothered me since that night.

__

February 9th 2008

8:31 am

I woke up early that morning. I had to tell Jade something before she left. I kissed Karen's forehead and left. I stopped by my old cave first to pick up something Jade had been sharing Marco's hut and I saw her leaving the hut with him in tow. He gave her a kiss before parting with her and returning to his hut. I heard him say

"And I do not snore!" Before he closed the door. I waited on the bridge for Jade to come. She seemed surprised to see me.

"Shouldn't you be with your bride." She said.

"Yeah, but already had a fight over who's gun we were going to use to kill Visser 1 so she kicked me out." Jade laughed.

"I'm really happy for you Erik ." She said.

"Oh and thanks, I mean if it weren't for you I wouldn't be around for this wedding." I said subconsciously feeling the shrapnel still in my stomach. (morphing just fixes the injuries made by bullets and other projectiles it doesn't remove the bullets, Karen still has a bullet in her right leg.)

"And vice-versa."

"Yeah," I said. "Look Jade, I need to tell you something." She sighed

"Can't be good news can it?"

"not really, Jade I am going to attack the Yerk Pool soon . I am going to try and get the Animorphs to help but even if they don't I'm going in. I, I don't want to live this way much longer, I just can't do that to Karen, I want our marriage to be as happy as possible. When we get in we're going to plant C-4 and detonate. I don't know it will effect the ground above it so." I took 5 syringes out of my pocket. "This is a special tranquilizer drug, it will knock a person out for 1 day. I want you to use this on your family and get them to safety. Keep them tied up until your sure they're not infested then wait outside until we're done, you should know when your done and before you ask I'm not letting you come on this mission. We need redundancy in our fights and if you don't survive we'll be in trouble we need to keep at least a few people alive."

Jade took the syringes and put them in her pocket. I couldn't read her eyes but I was sure she was going to go through with it. She gave me a kiss on the cheek.

"Be careful," She said. "Don't die on me, you still owe me 5 and I don't know who to pass that debt on to."

"I will." Jade walked over the bridge and away from the colony halfway out she was joined by Robert. Again it was just us and the Animorphs.

****

I am going to give out a beltated thanks to me lamb for giving me some of the inspriration for this book, and Lilmaniac for allowing me to use her well crafted characters, and to everyone else who reads and reviews this book, your input is greatly aprcaitied.


	27. Tape Transcript 25

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12:00 pm

"You've lost your fucking mind Bishop, just how hard did you hit your head when I slapped you?" Jake was saying. I had just told him about my plan and he didn't take it very well.

"Look Jake," I said. "If we don't make a big move soon we'll be in trouble that virus only guaranteed us a few months if they get those satellites up and running…"

"I know what will happen." Jake said. I noticed that Tobias and Rachel were looking at Jake with a murderous expression. I wasn't clear on what happened after the mission but from what Cassie told me Rachel had drawn blood.

"Then you should know that this is the only way." Jake sighed he obviously didn't want to concede to me but he was stuck, no one else had a better idea.

"I assume you have a plan on how to do this." Jake said.

"Yeah I do. Our biggest problem will be getting in but I've found a way around it." We go into an entrance location with guns blazing and get someone to disable the security system. Then we go into the pool itself and attack morphs will be last resort. Once we get in we'll take C-4 explosives and set them at key locations we will get out of the blast zone and detonate, boom, invasion's over."

"Yeah, that's a good idea," Jake said. "But there's something you forgot to mention: there's so much fucking security in there we'll be lucky to get into the pool alive much less plant anything! I…"

"That," I said. "Is something we've considered. The best thing for us to do is to have a someone provide a diversion. We're going to split into two teams. Team Scorn which will be causing the diversion, they will morph and do anything they can to cause problems. And team Wrath, they will handle the planting of the C-4. Hopefully team Wrath will look like regular controllers trying to get out of firing range.

"Once the C-4 is planted we will retreat, again hoping that the C-4 won't be noticed then we will beat feet out of there and give the detonation signal."

"Oh and I assume the Yerks will just ignore all the plastic explosives you're scattering around. You know they'll deactivate them or remove…"

"No they won't be able to. The C-4 we plan to use is specialized, once placed it cannot be removed or deactivated. If we place it then all we have to do is give the detonation signal and," I made a snapping motion with my hand. "pffft the Yerk-Pool is gone." Danny had shown up a few hours earlier I told him about my plans.

"Now," he said. "It's going to take about 9 months to get all the things we need together."

"Nine Months?!" Rachel said. "They'll have found us by then."

"Maybe not," Danny said. "There has been a lot of sunspot activity lately sunspots, disrupt satellite signals so we may have more time."

"And 9 months will give us time to run tests using the computer to find the best spots to place the c-4." Jerry said. Jake sighed.

"OK lets put it to a vote form my team only who wants to do this." Slowly hand went up: Rachel, Marco Tobias and Ax. "I guess that's it then, Erik we're with you , so you want to call a truce?" He extended his hand.

"Truce." I said shaking his hand. "That's all I have to say so you can go off now."

I went for a walk to think about what just happened. It was now official, we had enough people to fight a final battle with the Yerks, enough people to fight and possibly win. I knew that if we did, life would be a whole lot easier. My college grades was FUBAR along with any hope of becoming a doctor, but maybe I could pursue a career elsewhere. A lot of exposure would come with the attack maybe I could go into politics…

"You know I hear you following me from outside the hut Jordan." I said. Jordan jumped from the tree she had been hiding in, she had been trying to follow me in silence since I left the meeting room. She looked a lot like her older sister, she was about three years younger: (15) and hadn't said much since my team arrived.

"Damn," She said. "Well so much for getting on the team for stealth."  
"Come again?" I said.

"I want to join one of the teams, I don't like sitting here while the others risk their lives it's my world too!"

"Hey Jordan I doubt you'll ever get on the Animorphs team as long as Jake runs it, and anyway working with him would be like working for Neville Chamberlain."

"Huh?"

"You failed history didn't you?"

"I don't see what that has to…"

"Look, back to what you were saying," I said, I just had a thought, I needed something to pass the time while I waited for the weapons and C-4 to come in. "If you want to learn how to use stealth properly, then I can teach you."

"Really," She said. "You mean that."

"Yeah, I mean it, but it won't be a walk in the park you'd better be ready to work because my training came from a Chee posing as a CIA agent and it wasn't simple."  
"I am at the point where I would do anything to break the monotony of this life."

"Yup, you're Rachel's sister all right." Jordan laughed slightly but maintained a serious air.

"I mean it Erik, if you're going to train me I want to start as soon as possible."

"OK then," I said. "We'll start with the basics: The reason I heard you following me is that you were more concerned with keeping up with me than you were at stealth. The number one rule of stealth is: speed means noise and noise means compromise. If someone hears you then they will turn and if they turn and see you you'll find yourself at the pearly gates before you even know you made a mistake…" I spent the next few hours giving her lessons on stealth thankful for this project, and if things went well I may have another member for our team making our assault that much easier.

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Seven Months Later

September 25th 2008

2:24pm

The last seven months had been tough on all of us. I had been training Jordan with the help of Karen who had found out about my little project the night I started it. So far I had been able to keep it from the Animorph team, which was a blessing considering that Rachel was to protective of her sister to approve and Jake couldn't see past his damn umbrella (Neville Chamberlain reference FYI) to approve.

Besides training Jordan I was spending a lot of time in the hut with a computer trying to find the right spots to place the c-4 charges. So far I hadn't had any luck at all. The charges would go off but only destroy a portion of the pool, and the damage could easily be repaired in a few weeks. After about three months with the help of Jerry and James we were finally able to come up with a working model.

It would be a tough one though, the placement of the charges would have to be exact, and the spacing between the points to place the charges was great. This was going to put more stress on Scorn. I was becoming increasingly sure that we would endure massive casualties.

All of this work was stressful and by nightfall I normally came back to the cave and collapsed on the bed. The days I had to myself were spent with Karen talking, taking walks, making love, and sometimes just sitting with each other. Karen if possible became even more dear to me after our wedding. The high stress of preparing for an attack was greatly alleviated by spending time with her.

Karen had a lot of stress too, she was as active in preparing as I was if not more. No one really had an easy seven months. Especially Jerry, Becky hadn't returned his affections and he took it pretty hard. Jerry's love life was pretty much non-existent, he got a few girls with his fiery intellect but he never really settled down. Becky was his true love and since she didn't return it, well it didn't make him feel too good.

But Jerry found help from a source even I didn't anticipate. Sarah, Rachel's younger sister, had taken a shine to him. He spent most of his free time reading to her or telling her stories about our missions. Seeing him taking care of the little girl hurt a part of me though. I had never really thought about children much, I didn't have time to. But, now that it looked like the war that had taken up so much of my time was nearly over, I began to realize that I would never have a child of my own.

That was the thing that always broke Karen's heart, she never said it but I saw it in her eyes. Back when we were living outside of the valley any time we saw a young family walking in the park, when one of her friends was pregnant and feeling the baby kick, when she saw a display of baby toys and clothes. One time when we were attending a baby shower for my cousin I saw her crying one of the bedrooms at the house.

I was sitting near the river mulling all of this over when I had the feeling I was being watched. It made me uncomfortable, another thing drilled into your head in stealth training was if you think your being watched then you are, and you'd better stay alert. I decided to go back to my cave and lie down, Karen was spending the day with Rachel, no doubt complaining about something I do, so I'd have the cave to myself for awhile so maybe I could catch a nap.

Plus in a cave there was only one way in, and anyone who tried to sneak up on me would have to attack before then. If I could draw them out before they were ready then I'd have a slight advantage… I walked back to the colony and I knew that something was wrong, it was deserted. No one was out, no baby Hork-Baijar playing baseball, no Cassie and Jake laying in the grass looking at the clouds, no Hork-Baijar carving houses in trees.

It must mean we had been attacked, whoever was following me must be an attacker. I didn't have a gun anywhere nearby (most of he supplies had arrived but we were still waiting on more c-4 and some automatic weapons) so I knew I need to morph. I focused on the cougar…

"_Surprise_," I almost jumped out of my skin. "Happy birthday Erik!" The air shimmered and I saw the colony as it should be, but now there was a large table that had several boxes of Pizza Hut pizza on it along with a few wrapped gifts. I had been a part of a few small birthday celebrations in the valley but none this elaborate, why were people making such a big deal over me.

"I talked them into it," Karen said answering my question, after living together for a few months we could tell what each other was going to say pretty easily. "Thought we'd all need a break and you more than anyone else." She smiled and led me over to the table, she took a plate (it had been a long time since I had been able to use a plate) and piled it high with pizza. "Eat up." I realized how hungry I was. Even though the Chee tried to get us food it wasn't easy for them and we were relying more and more on increasingly unsuccessful hunting trips for our sustenance.

After I sat down the rest of the humans got their share of the food. Karen sat next to me and I had a flashback to another time we had shared pizza together, that night I came so close to death that when I realized I was alive I just ran over to Karen and kissed her and held her for about ten minutes.

We sat and ate in silence a few minutes, then Karen spoke up.

"Two months left…" she said.

"Yeah," I said. "I know."  
"Erik if we pull this off we'll win you know that right? Erek says there's only one Yerk Pool location so if it goes then will be a near fatal blow to the Yerks, they'll be dependent on portable Yerk pools, the only choice they'll have is to leave earth, and once they do those who were controllers will be able to prove that the invasion was real, they'll never get the drop on us again. We will have saved earth."

"It's hard to believe," I said. "I mean so much of our lives has been based on this war, Karen, do you know what you want to do after we win."

"Anything that has you in my life"  
"Oh don't give me that honey, I know you want to do something besides follow me, that's just not your style."

"I, well, I've always wanted to have a radio show…"

"Then can I ask why you had a major in pharmacy?"

" Well when I started college I wasn't a freedom fighter now that I might have exposure I think I could get a show rather easily, what about you Erik?"  
"I want to go into politics, because you know I've missed so much school I doubt I can make up for lost time, and anyway, I think I'd do better in politics."

"I'm sorry I couldn't help overhearing," Marco said. "OK I was eavesdropping so what? I plan to get a TV show, I want to be on SNL, or something like that." One by one we found out from each member of the two teams what they wanted to do. Rachel and Tobias were going to get married and open a gymnastics studio (Tobias' time as a hawk helped increase his reflexes.) Cassie was going to open up a vet clinic, Jake was going to open a museum of the war weenies with a yearly festival to honor the UN… ok, he didn't even talk to us, he still was mad or sad or something from the mission a few months back. James and Anna planned to go into the military, and Fred was going to open up a series of learning centers for urban children.

One thing I realized though all throughout the conversations we had was one thing. We were all assuming that we would win this mission, and that we would all come back alive, and I knew in my heart that the later was just not possible…

****

OK now it's time for me to give you a voice in the stories progress, do you want Erik on strike force Scorn or Wrath, vote using the reviews and tell me what you think of the chapter. As of now I think I may have four or five more coming.


	28. tape transcript 26

Word of warning, the next two chapter may seem a bit repetitive so forgive me if they are.

October 18 2007

4:22 pm

"One of the realities of stealth is eventually, no matter how good you are, you'll be caught, that's when arms training comes in." I said. Karen was standing to one side while Jordan was holding burst pistol. "What you've got there is my favorite weapon the burst pistol. You pull the trigger and it fires three bullets, that will be enough to take out someone if they see you." I had set up a cardboard cut-out of a person about thirty yards away.

"Now," I said. "I doubt you'll be firing from this long range but it pays to prepare. The gun is point and shoot, all you have to do is aim it at the cut out and pull the trigger." Jordan aimed the gun with both hands and fired. She absorbed the recoil a lot better than I had thought she would, and she made three dead hits on the chest.

"Wow…" I said. Jordan smiled.

"I have a little pistol training myself, dad didn't want me to end up being a victim…" it was the first time I had heard Jordan mention her late father, she seemed to take it in stride. "You know that's one reason I want to fight, I want to get those fuckers for what they did to my dad." She shot again and hit the neck this time.

"Well," I said trying to keep her focused. "Since you know a lot about arms then it's time to move on to hand-to-hand. Now you don't want anything flashy, no _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon_ stuff. What I'm going to teach are simple hit-and-run moves."

"How do you know all this stuff?" Jordan asked.

"Karen's dad was an Aikido instructor, so I know a lot of moves, and if you think I know a lot should see Karen here, which reminds me," I turned to Karen. "Do you want to teach her this?"

"No I think you should, you're a better teacher than me anyway." Karen said. I turned back to Jordan.

"OK, chances are you'll be fighting a man so I want you to make a chop hand." She did. "now you take the pinky side of it, and feel, OK you found the hard spot, OK you strike with that." I showed her the moves first using Karen as my dummy. "You go, groin, stomach, neck and run. Now what I just showed you when done hard and fast should give you enough time to run from anyone, but if you have more than one person to fight you're in trouble. So it's best to avoid large groups of people whenever you can.

" Here give it a try one me, don't go easy, now I can morph off any, ow," Jordan did the combo I told her quickly. I fell over in pain. "not bad…" I said. "Karen, could you be a dear and find my right testicle, I think it landed over there…" Jordan laughed a bit, then looked concerned.

"You okay?" She asked. I got painfully to my feet with Karen's help.

"Fine, Fine…" I said I morphed cougar to repair the damage to my groin then morphed back. "Let me guess, you've had self defense classes before too?"

"A few." She admitted. "But hey every bit you of information you can give me helps.."

"I'll be honest with you Jordan. I think you know about everything I do."

"Then can I come with you on the next mission." I sighed.

"Jordan," I said. "The next mission is very dangerous, and I'm going to be using the entire Animorph team and my entire team on it, I'm going to need some back up plans, so I want you to stay here and continue the fight if we die."

"How am I going to do that alone?" Jordan asked. "And don't say things like that, you guys are not going to die."

"If we do then you'll be the last hope, and I'm going to give you the morphing power." I said. I got up and walked over to a bag I had brought with me and withdrew a small green box.

"I though the box was blue." Jordan said.

"Ours isn't exactly the same thing," I said walking over to her from where I put the bag down. When I got over to her she reached out her hand but before she did I stopped her. "I have to warn you the kind of morphing we do, it's painful, and it will leave you sterile, I know this is a big sacrifice so I want you to think before you touch this box." She waited only afew minutes then touched the box. I saw teeth grit, and knew she was feeling the shock from the box that felt like you had grabbed an electric fence.

"I already know how to morph," She said. "is there anything else you can teach me?"

"Nothing," I said handing her the cube. 'You go home OK, hide this, and don't tell anyone about it, if Jake finds out he'll hit the roof, and if we don't come back take the cube and give the power to some of the others here. Just hold the cube while they touch it."

"OK and I won't tell anyone." she said and left. I walked over to Karen and sat down. She sat down next to me looked at me and smiled.

"You're a good teacher." She said.

"Thanks," I blushed a little. "I hope I did the right thing I mean I just took away her ability have kids and have condemned her to horrible pain."

"Erik you did what you had to," she took my hand. "If we all died then there'd be no hope for the world, we need to have someone to carry on the torch. And she hasn't morphed yet so she could still have kids."

"She'll have morphed by the end of the day today she has too much of her sister in her not to." I laughed. Then it sunk in big time.

"One month… and then we go to fight, this could be our last month together." Karen smiled, she took my hand and put it on her breast.

"Then we should spend this last month well." She semi tackled me and we rolled around kissing for a while. We slipped each others clothes off and made love. After we finished we got dressed and returned to our cave.

We satyed in the cave for only a few minutes before a Hork-Baijar knocked on our door.

"Sir," He said after I opened the door. "Shipment come in, you must check." I kissed Karen and followed the Hork-Baijar. Danny had four large crates that he was wheeling in on carts with the help of other Hork-Baijar. They set the crates down and the Hork-Baijar opened them with their blades. I looked in the crates.

In the first one there were more guns. Four AK-47s with 100 clips of ammunition, that made our total 10 Aks, and 400 clips of ammo. We were defiantly ready gun wise. The next crate contianed the specialized C-4. It looked like a normal plastic explosive, but on the bottom was a special coating, it was a platinum-diamond alloy created by the Chee, once the alloy was activated (by peeling off the paper on the bottom.) It would be impossible to move the C-4. The third crate contained more C-4. The fourth contained Kevlar vests and gas masks.

"Looks good to me," I said. "Do we have anything else coming?"

"Yeah," Erek said. "We've got some flash/bang grenades coming along with more AK ammo and I think we may be able to scare up some M-16s, and HUD's if our guy in the military can sneak them out." HUDs were special masks that would inform someone if someone was near them. The HUD's would be only be used to ID allies for our purposes though, if it showed hostiles, well the screen would be full.

"How long do you think that'll take?"

"One week, then another three for you to get everything in order, right now it looks like we're going to do this on November 10th."

"OK then." I waked back to the cave. Karen was sitting on the bed waiting for me.

"So?" She said.

"November 10th"

"A new D-day" She said.

'Already in radio mode aren't you?"

"No," She said with a huge smile. "If I were in radio mode I'd say: Senator Bishop is the biggest liberal in the senate and I can't believe he could call himself a republican." I laughed aloud.

"Would a liberal do this?" I asked, I grabbed her by her head pulled her to me and kissed her. She looked up.

"Yes." She pushed me down on the bed and for the second time that day we made love. Afterwards we just lay there for a few minutes admiring each others bodies, then there was a knock at the door. I hastily put on my underwear and a pair of pants and Karen pulled on a shirt and cutoffs. I opened the door.

"Hope I didn't interrupt anything," Marco said noticing our hastily put on clothes. "But you need to get to the meeting hut, Jake wants to know if you've got a concrete plan together yet. I growled.

"That little bastard is in no position to demand anything from me but I'll be there, just give me a few minutes." I got fully dressed and walked arm in arm with Karen to the hut. Jerry was sitting outside teaching Sarah how to hack into secure sections of websites. I motioned for him to follow me.

The rest of the two teams was already there.

"I want you plan _now _Bishop." Jake said.

"If you insist," I said then murmured. "_You dumb mother fucking son of a bitch_"

"What was that?" Jake said.

"I didn't say anything."

"Children," Cassie said. "Can we please get on with the meeting.

"Fine," I said. "There is a Yerk Pool entrance at the train station we went to two missions ago. So Jake what we're going to do, Jake, is have the members of strike force Wrath already in position. When strike force Scorn breaks in I then I want you act like your afraid of the other team. Once strike force Scorn has secured a person to open the entrance we will take members of Wrath "hostage". Wrath will go in first and act like normal controllers. Scorn will hide near the entrance and not enter until Wrath gives the OK.

"Once wrath gives the OK scorn must enter with all guns blazing, this is meant to look like an all-out assault on the Yerk Pool so I want you to fire and kill anything that moves. Right now it looks like we may be able to get HUDs so friendly fire shouldn't be a problem. As for C-4 each member of Wrath will be given a map of locations to place the C-4. They must be placed there and no where else for the explosion to do any damage. We have plenty of C-4 so use it all, if you have extra stick onto bug fighters, blade ships anything you can get it on.

"Once we've expended all our ammo I want Scorn to go battle morphs and cause more problems there's only 400 clips total so that comes about 66 clips per person, each clip contains 60 shots that 3960 shots on full automatic I'll wager we'll be in battle morphs in about thirty minutes. When the C-4 is position we need to run, get out of there quickly and give the detonation signal. Then, games over."

"That's your plan, how are you going to accomplish it without killing someone?" Jake said.  
"I doubt it'll work that way," I said simply. "There will almost certainly be casualties, so I want to know if your still behind me."

"We are," Marco said. "I want this to end." Around the room there were murmurs of affirmation.

"Very well then," I said. "November 10th."


	29. tape transcript 27

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November 9th 2007

7:54 pm

October went by cruelly fast. My days were spent inspecting the incoming weapons and equipment and training the others in it's use. I had yet to decide who was going to be on what team so everyone got full training in all equipment. This also gave us insurance, if a member of Wrath died they would have a replacement.

My nights, every one of them, were spent lying with Karen. I wanted to be with her a much as possible before the mission because even though I didn't want to think about it, there was a good chance one of us would not survive. I think Karen realized this too, because sometimes after we made love and she thought I was asleep I heard her praying silently.

Karen was religious she was Catholic like me but she was not as strong in faith as I was, she only prayed when something really bothered her. As for the others, Jerry had tried to explain to Sarah that he may not come back, Sarah was a smart girl for 8 years old, but she either didn't understand death yet or didn't want to face up to the fact that the man she regarded as a new father may die as well.

Anna and James spent their days much like Karen and I were spending ours. Becky had started writing to Robert regularly, and was pouring all the rest of her time into training. Fred spent his time training, normally he would spar with me or Rachel, or he would be swimming laps in the river.

Cassie and Jake were spending more time together than usual, as were Rachel and Tobias. Ax spent most of his time in his base form wandering around. Marco had been writing to Jade and was obviously afraid of not being able to see her again. I felt bad for encouraging her to leave but I knew it was for the best. With Golden Fist still around and Jordan equipped with the morphing power we still had a few backup plans should our plans fail.

I called both teams into session that night and went over the final details of the mission.

"Here's what we've got," I said. Looking over my shoulder and spying Jordan hiding in the rafters of the hut. (She had snuck in by parting the hay on the roof.) She had gotten a lot better at stealth and I got the feeling I only saw her because she wanted me to. I pressed a button on a disk (I had borrowed this from Ian.) and a hologram of the Yerk Pool appeared. I squeezed a small electric ball in my hand and several sections lit up with red dots. "These area are the prime C-4 locations, if we want this mission to succeed we need to hit every one of these got it? Each of you will be assigned 3 of the 18

"These," I said squeezing the ball again adding green dots to the red. "are the presumed locations of the Bug Fighters, about 67 of the Yerk's earth fleet is stationed there. So once you've placed you three go for them. Here," Orange dot's appeared. "Are the locations Sub-Visser offices, you hit these we may knock off an officer, that covers Wrath's objectives. See me after the meeting for your team assignment

"Team scorns all you need to do is shot morph and kill, shoot everyone and everything that isn't shown as green on your HUD, but a secondary objective," The screen cleared and refilled with blue dots. "Is to open these cages if you can, they contain human controllers if you free them then give them your M-16, I repeat do NOT fire your M-16, got it, once you've exhausted your AK throw the M-16 into the pool or free a human and give it him. Other than that you've got free reign."

"I don't know if you noticed this Erik," Jake said. "But just in case you flunked your book reports on our little book project my brother is a controller, and if he gets killed in the cross fire I'm going to kill you."

"Jake," Fred said jumping up. "You passive, appeasing little prick, get it through you thick head, this is a war, if there is collateral damage in this mission then it's to fucking bad, got it? This could be our last chance and I'm not blowing it just so you'll have a full family reunion, I've already lost a good friend in this war…" Jake seemed to loose it.

"Look ass wipe" His face turned red and he was screaming. "_You have no idea what it's like to go through this to have one member of you own family you own family against you to have to risk killing him so many times, to have to pussyfoot around so you don't have your own flesh and blood's death on your…_"

"Don't tell me what I don't know little man!" Before I could stop him Fred reached across the table we were sitting at grabbed Jake by the throat and slammed him against the wall so hard I was afraid it would knock Jordan down. Cassie looked scared and moved to help her boyfriend, but saw that Fred wasn't trying to hurt him badly and backed off. "Let me tell you something, I killed my own mother, my own mother about a year ago. I had to blind her and bite her over and over as a spitting cobra because she was going to kill Erik and Jade.

"I had to kill the woman who helped me through some of the roughest times in my life, I had to take the life of the person who gave me life, do you know how that feels. You worry about killing your brother, but I can assure you the bond between brothers is not as strong as the bond between mother and son, so don't tell me I don't know how it feels. To be a true warrior to be a true fighter you must sacrfice what you want for the greater good, because if you don't do that then you are _nothing _you are more a burden than an aide because all your career you will pass up great opportunities in the name of morality. Don't get me wrong I like morality but how morale is it to doom the human race for something you want?" Fred let him fall to the ground. "You do what Erik tells you got it?" Jake nodded. The Animorphs had a look of shock on their faces.

Even my own team seemed surprised Fred had never spoken about what happened in that underwater lab. We had never pressed him to, no person who could say they had a soul would press him. Jake moved painfully back to his seat, Cassie put her arm around him.

"Now," I said. "Getting back to the matter at hand, I want to make sure that Scorn understands what to do at the station, you rush in and fire a few shot to scare everyone then you find someone in charge and make them deactivate all security in the pool. Then let him go, let him give warning, we want them to think that we're the only ones there Wrath meanwhile will run in ahead of Scorn since agreed last month to change the plan that way they will be placing the C-4 already." I sighed.

" here are team assignments, Rachel, Jake, Becky, Anna, James, and Fred: your on team scorn. Karen, Tobias, Ax, Cassie, Marco, Jerry: team wrath. As for me I'll decide tomorrow where I'll be. That's it, you might want to start saying your goodbyes because some of us aren't coming back…" Slowly everyone filed out. All the couples going out hand-in-hand. Soon only Karen and I were left, I took her hand and we walked back home. I took solace in the fact that I knew Jake wouldn't try to go peacekeeper on me. If he did Fred would kill him.


	30. tape transcript 28

__

11:34 pm

Karen and I laid next to each other, naked. We had finished making love for at least the third time in as many hours. I just stared at her a few minutes admiring her incredible beauty ,and wondering how on earth I was so lucky to have her by my side. Karen kissed me on the cheek.

"Once more?" she said.

"I don't know Kare," I said. "think we need some sleep it's a big day tomorrow." Karen moved closer to me. She put her chin on my shoulder and kissed my neck, then moved to the shoulder blade. Then my belly, then lower. "I'll run on adrenaline." I said. And she took me in once more. I can honestly say that I never had felt more ecstasy than that night, I'm almost positive that we both kissed every inch of each others bodies, and I think we kept half the colony up.

__

November 10th 2007

7:23 am

I woke up the earliest of any member. Karen was still sound sleep covered only by the bed sheets . I kissed her on the forehead and walked outside. The crates were open and checked. We had a final count the other night. 7 AK's 7 M-16's and a total of 3,000 shots per person due to the fact that some of the ammo was FUBAR.

It was going to be a tough fight for team Scorn, I hoped they could neutralize the worst of the hostiles before going into battle morphs. There was an extra AK in case I chose to be with Scorn, I still hadn't decided what team to fight on I would have to make that decision soon though, in order to pass the time I checked the equipment again.

I put on a HUD and turned it on instantly 10 green dots appeared close together, these were the friendly HUD's any other person would register as a red dot. The HUD used a heart beat sensor so anyone with a heart beat would register on the screen. I walked towards a hut and saw a faint red dot a appear the system appeared functional . Any person with a heartbeat would either gave a red dot or a green dot on their chest red dot meant either a hostile or a non-combatant, and any one with a red dot would be killed. To avoid killing ally freed from the cages I equipped every M-16 we had with a chip that would make whoever held it appear as a friendly, anyone who didn't have one of our HUD's or M-16's could only be saved if they had an arm band that had the same chip as an the M-16, they would be given to freed Hork-Baijar or humans who wanted to find a weapon from a dead body.

I ran through the same test with each HUD once I was satisfied I went back to our cave and woke Karen up.

"It's time," I said. "get dressed I'll go get the others." I left and went to each cave. Everyone got up without a word the mood was somber to say the least. When I went to the Animorphs team I found Rachel already up.

"Bout time," She said. "I was afraid you'd gotten cold feet. I'll wake up the others I don't think you want to wake Jake up."  
"Why?" I asked.

"Well one he's in there with Cassie, and two he's not exactly feeling rosy about your team since Fred put his imprint in the meeting hut wall if you wake him up from his winning the NCAA tournament dream he may get trigger happy."

"Didn't know the bastard knew how to aim a gun."

"Hey!" Rachel seemed a bit angered by that statement. "That's my cousin your talking about, I may not agree with his war-time strategy but lets not throw insults OK."

"Sorry." I said.

"It's OK, you'd better go and wait for us we'll only be a few minutes." I walked back to the overlook where my team had gathered.

"I've made my decision." I said. "I'm going to be on Scorn." Karen didn't look happy about that decision, there was little reaction to my statement however, most of the team were still lost in thought. After ten minutes the Animorphs showed up. After finding out what team I was on we suited up. Scorn was in full assault uniform, complete with black ski masks. Wrath had the C-4 hidden in book sacs that looked a like a back packers pack. Everyone was nervous even frightened, I decided it was time to rally the troops as it were. I cleared my throat.

"I know you're all scared. I'm scared too, this is a dangerous mission, the most dangerous we will ever face. I'm not gonna lie and say we're all coming home, that's not possible what we are trying to do will take lives. But that is the price we must be prepared to pay. In my 25 years I have seen things no human should see, and I have learned things no man should know, but I've learned this, people will grab onto anything to help them make it through a hard time.

"No matter how stupid, insane, or impossible it seems, they will hold on to it. That's what we are, we are what those men, women, and children down there in those cages hope for we are the reason that they don't just roll over and die. We may loose some of our men, but as a team we will survive, we will succeed we will win, because we are hope _AND HOPE NEVER DIES!_" While there wasn't the cheering and gun shaking I was hoping for I think I had the desired affect everyone seemed to be less nervous. Rachel walked up to me.

"I forgot to ask on your birthday, you're 25?" She said.

"22." I said.

"Yeah 5 sounds better." Rachel smiled

We stepped past the hologram and back into the woods. Waiting for us was an ATV each.

"Wrath go ahead and get to the station want you all in position. Becky, hand them the communication gear." Becky handed out the hidden mikes and ear pieces we had used on the mission that I had found Rachel on, ironically the same equipment I used at the start of this ordeal would be with us at the end of it. Ax went into his human morph.

"You already know how to use the equipment remember Wrath announce each successful plant of C-4 and once your spent run like Hell for the exits. Once all the C-4 is planted Scorn is to retreat like they've been defeated, and meet up with wrath at the same entrance we used to get in. Once we've reached the halfway point we'll detonate, understood." There were nods from Wrath. "Good luck guys, may God be with you." Each member of wrath got on the ATV's and rode away. After about an hour me and the rest of scorn got on the remaining ATV's and drove off.

The ride was rather bumpy since it was mountain terrain after all. _ATV my ass _I thought. _I'm getting a refund from Erik the second I come back_. It was a four hour ride to the city once I arrived with the rest of my team behind me I put on my mask but before I did I pressed the mike on my lip.

"Burning Cougar to Leaping Leopard, do you copy?"

"10-4 BC," Karen's voice said. "What's your 20?"

"On the outskirts Leopard your in charge of the mission OK get into position and get ready we'll be there in ten minutes. Cougar out." I looked behind me, and nodded. We all walked into the city, once we got to the station I turned around to say something then noticed something: there was a buzzard in the air, only one and I had seen the same one, or at least I thought it was the same one, before I left. I dismissed it as a coincidence, a decision I both regret and revere.

"Guys," I said drawing my AK and putting on my mask. "Lets go!"


	31. tape transcript 29

"All right everyone down on the fucking ground!" I yelled, those simple word incited panic the people who ran quickly got on the ground after I shot into the air. "OK now here's how this is going to work, you fuckers give us what we want and no one gets hurt. Which one of you has the codes the Pool?" There was no response. "OK lets not be the strong silent types here, if you guys want to leave this station with your brains intact then someone had better tell me the codes." Still no answer from the cowering masses. Fred tried his luck.

"This can be done one of two way's guys: you can give us the codes now, or we can take them from your corpses later whichever one you, ah fuck!" Fred turned around and blaster the security guard who had shot him. The Kevlar that had saved Fred was not being worn by the guard. Blood exploded from his back; looking at the gore on the ground I thought I saw bits of intestine from the gut shots. "OK, anyone _else_ want to take a shot at us?" While we were talking the other members of Scorn were circling the area, finally someone stood up.

"Andilate," the man said. "I have the codes, but it's a retinal scanner, so you need me to do this I will let you in, and not only that but I'll disable all security in the pool under one condition."

"And what's that?" Rachel had walked over and had her AK pointed at his head.

"I want you to let me live, give me mercy when your species begins to bring us to justice." I couldn't believe my ears, a Yerk willing to negotiate, or course anyone with their back against the wall would do that…"

"You have a deal," I said. "But I want you to leave your host got it?" The man nodded. "Take us to the area. But I want security you, you, you" I pointed at all the members of wrath. "Come with us." The man led us behind a ticket counter and into a break room. He pressed a button labeled "out of order" on a nearby coffee machine. The panel that displayed the type of coffee (a type I couldn't pronounce) opened to reveal a retinal scanner. The man then pressed another button and a tube fell from the machine the man held the tube up to his ear and a Yerk fell into it. The man closed the tube and put it in his pocket.

"I thought this day would never come…" the man now free from the Yerk control said.

"What day?" I asked.

"The day my Yerk's kind won their battle."  
"What are you talking about?" I said.

"You didn't read _The Sickness_ did you Erik?" Rachel asked.

"No you weren't in it long and I was your biggest fan but I don't see what…"

"Well looks like Mr. Bishop isn't all he's cracked…" Jake began.

"Don't start this again, you" Rachel turned to the now free human who was holding what I guessed was a portable Kanodra that the Yerk had slid into. "Tell him about the peace movement."

"Long story short Mr. Bishop did you say?" The man said. "Not all Yerk's want to be in this war and the ones who don't are trying to stop the invasions by any means necessary and now with you hear ready to fight we can get a leg up on our opponents." I laughed.

"Wow I just ran into Malcolm fucking X of the Yerk's."

"If that's what you want to call me fine," The man said. "But I am letting you in to help my kind, give me a minute to give them the evac signal…" He pressed yet another button and the sold out lights on all of the flavors glowed solid. After a few minutes each one went off. "They've all escaped, now I can let you in." He leaned in front of the first panel that opened. After another short wait a voice came over an interCom

"Greeting Visser 42 what is your order?" The voice said.

"I am transporting new controllers to the area please disable all security until further notice."

"Disabling" there was a beep.

"Security disabled please bring the new men in now." The machine moved to the side exposing a long stairwell the entrance to the Yerk Pool.

"Team Wrath move in!" Karen yelled and the team ran down the stairwell.

"Before you go in." The man who had been host to Malcolm Yerk said. "You'll need to kill me."

"We can't do that…" Jake said.

"We have to," I said. "This needs to look like a raid if this man lives."  
"Then your mission will fail." The man said. "I can assure you young Andilate that I know this sacrifice is great but I feel it is needed, I am willing to die in order for my world to be saved."

"We're in" I heard Karen say. We needed to go in. I felt bad about this, I didn't want to kill someone who wasn't a threat at all, this man was an ally and you just didn't…but I knew what I had to do.

"Get on your knees and put your hands behind your back." I said. He obeyed.

"Any last requests?" I said.

"Yeah," the man took a photo from his pocket. It was of two women one old and one young smiling at a unseen face. "Tell my mother and little sister I died gallantly. And keep my Yerk alive, he'll testify against voluntary controllers in the treason trails that will follow."

"Granted." I took out a pistol that I had lifted from the dead guard outside. I put it to the mans head. "God forgive me I said and pulled the trigger. The man's face almost entirely left his body in an explosion of gore. The man fell forward. I sniffled weeping silently for the man I had known for less than an hour. I then composed myself.

"Team Scorn MOVE IN!" I yelled. "This is our day! Onward to victory." I ran in. I heard Rachel say.

"Hey Brave Heart wait for us… Oh NO! I'm becoming Marco!" It was the last time I laughed for the next few hours.


	32. tape transcript 30

I ran down the stairs followed by my team. Halfway down I saw all of Wrath flanked by Hork-Bajiar being led to the Pool.

"For Earth!" I yelled and ran down the stair firing at the Hork-Bajiar and hitting most of them. Every member of wrath then ran down the steps screaming.

"Andilates!" Karen yelled. "We're under attack!" Fred finished off the last of the Hork-Bajiar and we ran into the pool itself. When I got there I again thought that this must be what Hell looks like. The rust colored pool in the center. The cages the Hork-Bajiar running around… the screams.

"FUCKING slugs…"

"Evil devils."  
"When I get out of here I'm going to feed you your little slug dicks…"

"Get away from me; don't make me go back please I'll give you…"

"Stop please, please."

"Free, let me go you over grown lizard…"

"Hey blades for brains, when I get outta here…" I tuned it out. I tuned on my HUD and began to fire.

"Scorn attack!" I yelled and pulled off my mask. Gunshots rang out; I saw blood go flying in every direction from the hits we got.

"Shit, launch a counter attack!" I heard a human say, and I saw robots with dracon beams for arms begin to come to life and attack. Tseww, Tseww.

"Take out those druids!" I yelled. I fired my AK at the one that was heading for me. It broke apart. I began to fight towards the cages. A group Hork-Bajiar got in my way. I fired off an entire clip, and that cleared a way. I reloaded in time to fire another clip at yet another group. I heard other gunshots all around, then Cassie's voice.

"C-4 placed two to go!" I kept on running towards the cages. I met no more resistance. When I got there I was met by yells of joy.

"Whoo hoo get those faggots big man!" A tall thin black boy was yelling. I decided he was my best bet for giving a gun to. I pressed a button on his cage, the door swung open.

"Here," I threw the gun at him. "Use some of that rage blow away all the aliens but don't shoot any humans because you may hit one of my team, and here." I threw all the wrist bands at him he caught them too. "Free the others and give them one of these so they don't get shot.

"Can be done, man, oh God, I never thought this would happen, I'm free." He hugged me. "Carlos Santos is the name pleased to meet you."

"Hey hey we can have a party after I finish my job just start opening cages."

"Consider it done." He said. I ran off and decided to do something to really take attention off anything but our team. I ran toward the pool took aim and began shooing directly into it. I saw dead Yerk's bubble up to the top.

"Get him, Get him." Tseww Tseww. Two shots missed me. I reloaded fired in the direction the shots came from, no more came. Suddenly I felt myself fly through the air and into the pool.

I was pulled out. And led into a room. I could still hear the shots being fired outside.

"You there what's your name." I saw a man in military fatigues he was staring me in my face. I quickly realized that I still had my gun…how could that, then I knew it, they thought I was a controller now. "What is your hosts name then? Do you know that? Have you taken control yet answer the fucking question, we need information."

"My name is Fook U."

"That's an oriental name, you don't look oriental to me, your host is lying to you, don't you remember training Yerk, never trust your." I shot him.

"No I meant to say my name is Erik, Fuck You!" I ran out the door to the room and back into the fray. I tapped my lip.

"Erik's back how long have I been gone."

"Ten minutes man," I heard Marcos voice. "didn't miss much but everyone is on their second placement but Jerry's got a problem he's been cornered in one of his placement spots by a bunch of Hork-Bajiar you should go help him." I looked around I saw Hork-Bajiar trying to stay out of a spitting cobra's strike zone. I saw a tiger ripping a Taxxon to shreds. I saw a cape buffalo and a hippo attack a group of Hork-Bajiar and I saw Jerry firing wildly at a group of Hork-Bajiar that had cornered him in a cage. He fired killing a few of them. He must have picked up the gun from a body oh well.

"Come get some ass wipes," He fired again taking out another group. "Come on." A lucky shot was fired a dracon beam hit him square in the chest, a hole appeared and I could see clear through it.

"NOOOOOO!" I yelled. "Jerry!" I ran towards where he was, clearing out the Hork-Bajiar with a well placed burst of ammo. I ran in and drug his body out. I felt for a pulse even though I knew it was useless. That made two of my team dead. I was furious now. I picked up his gun and ammo and reentered the battle. I could morn later now I had to finish my job, I would not fail. I would let my friend die in vain.

"Second charge placed!" I heard Karen say. I was firing at every person I saw without green dot on my HUD. My running and shooting eventually brought me to a rock wall. When I turned to run back I was hit in the face, I dropped my gun and looked for the person who had hit me.

"Andilate bastard what are you hoping to accomplish" I couldn't believe what I saw.

"Hey asshole what have you got against the guy from nam that worked for you in the hotel." The man pinned me to the wall. He turned his neck slightly and I saw two huge scars I also saw that they had tiny electro transmitters on them, the Yerk's must have repaired the damage

"So you're the Andilate who bit my neck and left me, paralyzed, to die. If it weren't for the rescue party I would have died to. I felt a pain in my belly. I Saw a knife in the mans hand.

"Quick lesson on human anatomy tail blade for brains." he said I saw that the knife was diamond it went through the Kevlar like it was nothing. "Under the stomach is a crucial vein and if it's severed you would bleed out faster than you could morph." The pain got worse. I saw blood come from my stomach. "Yes, Yes you can feel it can't you Andilate, enjoy the pain… Not much furth…" His eyes opened wide he let go and pulled the knife out he took a stab at the person who had jammed the inch long jagged rock into his back but he missed. He fell on his face and died. I shot him in the head to make sure he was really dead and then looked at my rescuer.

I was shocked at what I saw…


	33. tape transcript 31

"Jordan! What the fuck, I thought I told you to stay in the valley and…"

"Your welcome for saving your life." Jordan said. "And I told you that I didn't stand around while others risked their lives and before you say anything I gave the morphing cube to Erek, he's going to make more Animorphs if I die." I decided to let Jordan's insubordination go for the time being in order to encourage the custom of her saving me. I handed her my gun.

"Give em hell Jordan," I said. Then I walked over and picked up the C-4 off Jerry's corpse and the HUD he was wearing. I put it on and noticed that there were a lot of green dots now Carlos must have been releasing a lot of people. I saw a blue dot on the HUD it was my next placement area.

I ran toward the blue dot. There was little resistance I saw that a lot of it was focused on the others. The plan was working! I reached the placement point. It was a column in the cave I took out a c-4 package took off the paper on bottom and stuck in to the column I pressed the arm button. I ran checked for the next location only one was left.

"Charge 2 placed one to go."

"Erik?" Becky said. "Where's Jerry?"

"Dead." I said.

"What! No," Becky seemed near tears. "Not him too, they'll be no one left."

"Snap out of it Becky we need you to keep your head." I was near the placement spot. Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye, I turned my head towards it and winced. A hippo was staggering through a mob or Hork-Baijar each one taking a slash at it and opening more and more wounds.

"Anna! Fight em." I knew Anna's mind must've been clouded from lack of blood. I got ready to morph cougar but then horde of the Hork-Baijar began spraying blood in every direction.

"Eat lead mother fuckers!" Santos yelled. Firing another burst of ammo. "That's for my sister." another burst. "That's for my mother." Another burst. "That's for being ugly!"

"Thanks man," Was all I could say I ran over to Anna. "Sis, you OK ."

(Erik?) Anna said her thought speak was weak, very weak. (That you? Are you OK, I saw you fall into the pool…) Carlos came over.

"Who's this?" He said.

"My sister, do me a favor and cover me please?" Carlos did as he was asked I turned back to Anna. "Morph back sis, you've got to morph back…"

(Can't focus bro, too much pain…) she said. I put my hand on her hippo head.

"Yes you can, come on try… try, you can't give up, you never give up sis. You came out of morphing shock faster than any of us, don't tell me your going to give up now!"

(I'll tr, try…) She said and I saw her eyes close. The hippo's head grew smaller, the nasty cuts on the cheeks faded into my sisters tanned skin. Hair shot from the head and the four legs became arms and human legs. The changes stopped.

"Ahhhhh, God, God in heaven the pain! I can't." I grabbed her still hippo shoulders and shook her with some difficulty.

"Yes you can! Anna, I know you can come on!" My mind drifted back to when I was on the other side of the fence in this same situation. My entire belly had been destroyed the pain of my stomach acid burning the other organs made me want to give up, I remembered what Jade had said to me that night.

"Think of James sis, you know he can't live without you, you know he needs you. Come on!" I saw her eyes close again her stomach caved inward and her skin became fully human healing all the wounds. Soon she was fully human and leaning on my shoulder.

"Thank you God, thank you…" I said silently. Anna's strength slowly came back to her. She looked up.

"Thanks bro , but if you'll excuse me…" Her eyes opened wide, her mouth filled with blood she fell to her knees and I saw the knife in her back. She collapsed her breath coming in rasps. I didn't know the man who had stabbed her because it was only a second before his head was severed by a cape buffalo's horns. James returned to human form and picked up Anna, her hair was now tinted red with blood. I knelt down next to her.

"Anna," James said looking at her face that was already pale. "Anna baby speak to me." Anna inhaled weakly.

"James, babe I'm sorry, I, I don't think I'm going to make it."

"NO!" I yelled "Don't talk like that please Anna please don't talk like that, morph again, come on."

"I can't," She said. "I don't have enough strength, I'd pass out from the pain…you two move on now, I love you both, she used her last once of strength to kiss James, the her eyes dilated and her heart stopped. James looked shocked.

"Anna, honey wake up, come on honey wake up! Wake up Goddamn it wake up" He held her close to his chest.

"James," I said near tears. "She's gone, she's gone…"

"NOOOOOOOOOO" James cry could be heard easily over the Dracon beam and gun fire. James grabbed the knife from her back. "Then I die with her!" He said and before I could stop him he cut his throat with the blade. The blood began to spurt immediately each heartbeat emptying his body depriving his brain of the life giving oxygen.

"James!" I said. "Morph it off, don't be…" I knew I was wasting my breath. James was too much in love with Anna to go on. I got up and headed for the next placement site leaving my brother-in-law to die.


	34. Tape Transcript 32

I had to move on, it wasn't easy for me, my sister and I had been close, but I knew the best way to honor her was to finish the mission. The next placement spot was near where Anna had died, it was a small cavern I walked into it and placed the C-4 in the dead center. I walked back out of the cave.

"This is Erik; can I get a progress report?" I said.

"This is Carlos," Carlos said, I wondered how he got onto our frequency. "You guys are in deep shit. Most of the people you released have been recaptured, I'm the only human left and there are on three," I heard a blast of Dracon beam fire. "Make that 2, Hork-Baijar left, I don't think this plan is going to work you guys need to get out of here…"

"It's ok Santos I planned it this way, I need a charge update." I said.

"All charges are panted but we've got a problem," Becky said. "Jake and Cassie are pinned down at their last placement site, and Cassie has the detonator, and things are getting worse, they've called for a Blade Ship it'll be here in about ten minutes and we don't want to be here when it arrives trust me."

"I'm on my way." I said and began to morph. I grew my fangs first. Then my ears migrated and my vision increased, my hands became paws and fingernails claws. My legs reversed direction. My feet and nails changed like my hands. Soon I was a cougar and felt the familiar grace and speed.

(Jake, Cassie where are you?) I asked. A hail of gunfire answered my question.

"Garlat get Andiliate." I ran in the direction of the sound and soon came upon a tiger that was bloodied standing in front of Cassie who was knocked out cold. There were several Hork-Baijar rushing toward them they were being taken down by the tiger.

(Jake,) I said. (Is Cassie ok?) Jake's voice was dripping with furry, and fear.

(I don't know,) He snarled clawing at a Hork-Baijar. (She got hit by a stray Dracon Beam and hasn't moved since.) He tore another Hork-Baijar in two.

(Have you placed the charge?) I asked joining the battle by pouncing on a Hork-Baijar

(Is that all you care about!) Jake yelled. (My girlfriend could be dead and all you want to know is…) I turned to him and roared in his face.

(If we don't place these charges in the next ten minutes we're all going to die. They've got a blade ship incoming and it's crew will make short work of us, now I've already lost a friend, my brother in law and my own sister to this mission, so I want to succeed so their deaths won't be in vain, now have you planted the charge or not?) I had to claw another Hork-Baijar during the monologue.

(She. Planted. It.) Jake snarled.

(Good,) I said I looked at her body; the detonator was in her right hand, I took it in my mouth. (Retreat, all units retreat, get to the exits split up.) I ran off, we had planned this we would split into small groups; I would have Becky, Karen and Jordan with me. We would be the ones to set off the charge. (You know your assignment so get out of here! Jordan follow me.) I ran toward the exit I was quickly joined by Becky and Jordan, Becky took the detonator.

"What now?" Jordan asked, as Dacron Beam fire began.

(We run like Hell and get to that exit.) We ran full force. The exit was in view, it was an overhang, and the entire pool would be visible from it without having to worry about getting caught in the blast. It was 50 yards away. 40... 35... A human blocked my path I pounced on his and crushed his ribcage. 30 yards. Four Taxxons barred our path I literally tore through them. 15 yards. 10 yards, 5 we were there.

We ran into a tunnel built into the overhang. I demorphed. Becky sat up the detonator she placed the keys in the slots and one key in the middle, the master detonator. I looked over the pool it was utter chaos. Shots being fired in all directions. Dead bodies everywhere smoke rising from misfired Dacron Beams and… Jake dragging Cassie through the pool. I spoke into the radio on my lip.

"Jake get out of the blast zone!" I said.

"I can't leave Cassie."

"Is anyone else down there with you?" I asked

"No they won't help me I'll do it myself though I'm _not _leaving her!"

"Jake get out of the blast zone that's an order."  
"I don't take orders from you!"

"I'm being serious Jake; I will not compromise this mission for your sake."

"Fuck you!"

"All right if that's the way you want it…" I said. "Becky detonate on my command."

"Erik! No!" I heard Rachel's voice. I ignored her, Jake was pigheaded at times, I remember another pigheaded individual, of course his pigheadedness saved my life…

"Detonate on my mark, 10... 9... 8... 7...6...5...4...3...2"

"You wouldn't dare!" Jake yelled.

"1... Mark one!" I said. Becky turned the key on the detonator.


	35. Tape Transcript 33

One of the auxiliary C-4 charges exploded, destroying a building in the pool. The panic that ensued blocked Jake from my view for a minute.

"Now you know I have it in me!" I said. "Now get out of the fucking blast zone because I'm not giving another warning got it!" Suddenly Cassie came to. Jake saw it and kissed her. He began to run with her at his side limping slightly, soon he was out of the blast zone. I heard Karen's voice in my earpiece.

"Erik, all personal are in safe zones ready to detonate."

"Ok then," I said. "Becky lets blow this place to the Hell it is." Becky smiled and turned the key. Nothing happened.

"Shit!" Becky said.

"What's wrong?" I said.

"When I set off that warning shot it changed the air composition, I can't get the signal into the pool."

"You mean we did all that and now we can't blow the place?" I said feeling horrible.

"No we can do it, the C-4 is set to detonate in a line, if one goes off by any source other than this detonator they'll go off, but the C-4 has to be set off manually." What she said took awhile to sink in.

"So someone has to go in there and set it off themselves?" Jordan asked.

"Yeah, they won't make it out…" Becky said sadly. I turned on my mike and told the others.

"Who's gonna do it?" Marco asked.

"It's my mission," I said. "I'll do it."

"What! Erik NO!" Karen said. Her voice made me smile. Becky looked at me.

"You sure?" Becky said. I nodded. "Okay all you have to do is press the red button on the charge, pick anyone of them it won't be hard to find.

"Ok see you then." I hugged Becky, she gave me a kiss on the cheek. I gave Jordan a hug too.

"Erik, no please don't , Erik don't…" Karen's voice was near tears. "Please Erik, I love you, I love you don't die, I'll find something there has to be…"

"We don't have time Kare, we need to finish this now, I'll always be with you, Fred can you hear me?"

"yeah," Fred said. "What is it." He was doing a good job of hiding his grief but I could still hear a touch of it.

"Take care of Karen OK." I said.

"I will, I promise."

"Bye guys." I said. I began to walk towards the entrance, back into Hell. I knew I was crying, I was going to miss Karen, well I would see her again, someday, in heaven, I began to pray silently. My feet were swept from under me. I saw Jordan had knocked me over. She looked me in the eyes.

"Your not dieing today Erik, Karen needs you, I'm expendable."

"No you're not I'm doing this." Jordan smiled. "No your not." She hit me in the face, I blacked out. In the blackness I heard several voices.

"What the Hell, what's Jordan doing here?" Rachel.

"Is she, I thought Erik… That bastard" (Guess who)

"Somone go get her, I'll do it don't let her…" Rachel again.

(It's too late for that she's already too far in if someone goes in after her they'll die too) Ax. The last voice I heard before I blacked out completely was Jordan's.

"This is for you Dad, I'll see you soon." I heard a loud blast then silence.  
**Short Chapter I know but I need to keep suspense. I did what I could for J/C but that's not my strong suit I can't really do much justice to that relationship. The next chapter should be the last one.**


	36. Finale

When I came to I didn't know where I was. I could see several people in white walking around. I saw a brief glimpse of Karen's face. _Is this heaven?_ I wondered. Then I heard Jakes voice.

"I think he's coming out of it." _Nope not heaven_.

"Good cause I didn't want to smother him I want to kill him face to face the prick!" Rachel's voice was seething with rage. Then I heard Karen's voice.

"Get out of here you two; you're lucky I only let you in in the first place because he's sharing a room with Cassie." I heard footsteps leaving, my vision cleared completely I saw Karen looking down at me, she was smiling.

"Hey, babe." She said I felt a surge of electricity through my body at the sight of her. I groaned there was a low level of pain in my head.

"Easy there, you have concussion."

"What happened where am I?" I asked.

"The hospital, you've been out for about three weeks."

"What happened, did the bomb go off?"  
"Yeah," Karen said. "It went off, the pool was destroyed, it took out a lot of the town there were a lot of deaths but… we won."

"What!?" I said not believing what I heard. Karen put her arms around me. "We won baby, its over. The Yerks tried to land a pool ship but the Animorphs and Black Angles took it out Fred, Becky and I helped sweep up the last remaining Yerks. Visser one is in a military prison as are most of the voluntary controllers. Earth is ready now, we sent the Yerks running off with their tails between their legs." I was shocked.

"And I was out for all of this? What happened?"

"You got hit by some shrapnel in addition to Jordan hitting you; I'm surprised you weren't out for a month." Rachel was suddenly over me shaking me trying to strangle me causing the pain in my head to explode.

"I'll tell you what happened you sick mother fucking, cock sucking, ass kissing, prick!" She slammed my head against the metal headboard the pain was horrible. Suddenly Tobias was in the room pulling her off me.

"It's not his fault Rachel, he tried to…" Rachel was in tears now burying her face in his shoulder.

"She's dead, he could have saved her he could have done something…"The rest of her words were lost in sobs. Tobias walked her out then came back in.

"Sorry about her," He said seeing me rub my head. "She just, they found Jordan's body today; she doesn't really blame you…" I remembered what happened then.

"Why did she do that?" I asked. "I was going to, why?" Karen sighed.

"I think it was because of her father, and she liked you Erik, she didn't want you to die and I guess she wanted to go on and be with her father." She said. My head was still hurting; I morphed in and out of cougar to repair the damage. Karen smiled.

"Don't expect them to let you out because of that, the doctors aren't willing to believe that a human could completely repair their wounds." I looked over at the bed next me Cassie was lying in it. "How is she?" I asked.

"She'll be ok; she got a piece of a high intensity Dracon Beam so she's in and out of it. The Chanberain doctors say she'll be fine though." Karen said.

"Chanberain doctors?" I said.

"A week after our mission Earth established permanent relationships with the race they've given us a lot of medical help we've been helping them with weapons, little things like that. The Andiliates are still being distant but we think they'll join the collation soon."

"Coalition?"

"The Coalition of Planets, it's a group of planets trying to defeat the Yerks they've started campaigns on several planets. The Yerk's invading days are over. At least I hope so." Karen said. The door opened Becky ran in.

"Erik! Thank God you're back." She wrapped me in a hug. Behind her Fred was standing with his arm on the door.

"Guess Karen already told you the news." Fred said.

"Yeah," I said. "I already know." Another person came into the room. This one was wearing an FBI jacket, hey come to think of it I think it was the dude who's taking notes over there. Anyway the man walked in and told me that I was to appear at a hearing about my group, which is of course what we're doing now. After he left I had one more visitor. Jade walked in, and smiled. Karen left I guess she thought we needed time alone.

"Glad you're finally up," She said. "Had me worried for a minute there, anyway thanks for the advice I got my parents out in time. You did a good job Erik." She said. She gave me a hug. "You won the war."

"Thanks but you know we couldn't have done without you, your team saved us don't forget." Jade smiled again.

"I'm sorry about Anna, and the others." She said.

"It's war," I said but my heart was breaking the next words were choked. "People die you can't…" Jade put her arm around me.

"Let it out Erik, it's over you can be human again." I cried letting all the emotion of the past few years out she patted me on the back until it was over. Jade had always been a good friend to me, and it felt good to let my pain out. Jade said something else.

"Oh and I guess it's up to me to tell you, each of us is receiving an award from somewhere in the neighborhood of 94 countries. Along with the prize money that comes with it we each are about 200 million dollars richer." It took awhile for what she said to sink in and, for the first time since I was18, when it sunk in I felt good.

_FBI HQ _

"Of course a week later you guys came over and brought me here. And we're right back where we started." Erik said.

"Are these the facts to the best of your recollection?" One of the agents said.

"Yes," Erik said. "I can assure you of that."

"Very well you may go." Erik got up and left the room flanked by two FBI agents. This time however the agents were his bodyguards, not his captors.

_One Year later _

November 10th 2008

Arlington National Cemetery Washington D.C.

I closed the final page of the transcript. The document had been sent to me by the FBI. I was to approve it before it was presented before the Yerk War commission. After looking it over I found no errors I singed it. Beside me Karen did the same. There was a knock on the door. A member of the secret service entered.

"Senator Bishop, Mrs. Bishop," He said. "It's time." We both stood up and followed him. We walked to a plot of land in the newest section of the cemetery. Carlos Santos, who had turned out to be a Marine General, introduced me.

"Ladies and Gentlemen here to break ground on the Yerk War memorial is Senator Erik Bishop. The crowd cheered. I took my spot at the podium.

"Ladies and gentlemen," I said looking out over the audience. "I am honored to be here today, as you know I fought in this war. I lost a lot of friends. I am glad to be here to give them the honor they deserve." I sniffled a little bit. "Jerry Moore, Amy Love, Anna and James Rhodes, and Jordan Bernson, are all heroes in this war, and they deserve our honor. They are bringing honored with 100 foot tall statues. But there are other heroes that must be seen to. Those are the ones who will be remembered by having their names engraved on the reflecting pools surrounding the statues. Those involuntary controllers who died at our hands, and the innocents who died in the explosion of the Yerk pool.

"I would like to convey my deepest sympathy for their families, I know this is a late condolence but thanks, the sacrifice they made is one that must never be forgotten. For their sacrifices coupled with those of the soldiers who fought with me ended in the destruction of the Yerk invading force. I am proud to break ground at this ceremony, but I must ask each of my friends to come up and share in this moment." As I called there names each member of my team, the Animorphs and Black Angle team came up to the podium.

We each placed a foot on the golden shovel together we turned the first part of the ground that would serve to remind the entire world, no the entire universe of the sacrifice of 5 great people, hundreds of innocent victims, and 14 survivors. They would forever know why they were free, they would forever see that the power of a few, could overcome even the greatest of forces, so long as that power is backed by faith, and love.

In the words of The Doors "This is the end… of my elaborate plans the end." Thanks to everyone who's read this far without asking God why bad Fan Fic's happen to good books. Thanks to all the reviewers who have so many positive things to say. Thanks my new partner in crime Lil Maniac for her devotion to reading this book and for her devotion to our project, and her openness to my suggestions. **I have started another fan fiction called The Forgotten prophecy; I encourage you to check that out. I also am working with Lil Maniac on a fan fic called Shattered if anyone likes this book then you should check this one out. And anyone who like this book should also check out Lil Maniac's fan fics too, because they are worth reading. This has been a big project for me and it is a big step since this is the first project I've really finished. For a final time I would like to thank those of you for reading this book. I hope to see you again soon. **

gpshaw


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